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EDITED BY 



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Associate Professor of English in Brown University 



TTbe Xahe Snglisb Claesics 



MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 



ON 



ADDISON AND JOHNSON 



EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE 

BY 

ALPHONSO G. NEWCOMER 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE LELAND STANFORD 
JUNIOR UNIVERSITY 



CHICAGO 
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1903 



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PREFACE 



Jiilins Caesar and Lord Macaulay have been 
much abused writers. They did not mean to 
write immortal works, Jeast of all did they mean 
to write immortal exercises for the school -room. 
But when a man writes — ^Just as he would fight, 
on the field of battle or in the political arena — 
with what Quintilian describes as ''force, point, 
and vehemence of style," he must expect the 
school-boy to devour his pages. This is right, — 
this is not abuse; the abuse is done when live 
literature is transformed into dead rhetoric, a 
thing for endless exercises in etymologies and con- 
structions, until the very name of the author 
becomes odious. Perhaps it is late for this com- 
plaint ; we flatter ourselves that we are coming to 
reason and balance in our methods. Certainly I 
should not try to discourage study, and liberal 
study, of the mechanics of composition. And 
there is no better medium for such study than 
Macaulay's Essays. But I trust that every teacher 
to whom the duty of conducting such study falls 
will not at the same time forget that literature is 
an art which touches life very closely, and has its 
springs far back in the human spirit. 

7 



8 PREFACE 

With the hope of encouraging this attitude I 
have ventured to assume the responsibility of 
setting afloat one more annotated text of Macau- 
lay. Eealizing that, in dealing with the work of 
a writer whose aflBliations with literature are 
chiefly formal (Introduction, 19), there is no 
escape from considerations of style, I have frankly 
put the matter foremost. But I have tried to 
take a broad view of its significance, and in partic- 
ular I have tried to do Macaulay justice. Alto- 
gether too many pupils have carried away from the 
study of him the narrow idea that his great 
achievement consisted in using one or two very 
patent (but, if they only knew it, very petty) rhetor- 
ical devices. It has been the primary aim of my 
Introduction to set these matters in their right 
perspective. I have not outlined specific methods 
of study, which are to be found everywhere by 
those who value them, but both Introduction and 
Notes contain many suggestions. It seems better 
to stop at this. Even the few illustrations I have 
used have been preferably drawn from essays not 
here printed. No editor should wish to take from 
teacher or pupil the profit of investigation or the 
stimulus of discovery. 

There is another matter in which I should like 
to counsel vigilance, and that is the habit of 
requiring pupils to trace allusions, quotations, etc. 
The practice has been much abused, and a warning 
seems especially necessary in the study of a writer 



PREFACE 9 

like Macaulay, who crowds his pages with instances 
and illustrations. It is profitable to follow him in 
the process of bringing together a dozen things to 
enforce his point, but it is not profitable to reverse 
the process and allow ourselves to be led away from 
the subject in hand into a multitude of unrelated 
matters. Such practices are ruinous to the intel- 
lect. We must concentrate attention, not dissi- 
pate it. Only when we fail to catch the full 
significance of an allusion, should we look it up. 
Then we must see to it that we bring back from 
our research just what occasioned the allusion, just 
what bears on the immediate passage. Other facts 
will be picked up by the way and may come use- 
ful in good time, but for the purpose of our pres- 
ent study we should insist on the vital relation of 
every fact contributed. 

So earnest am I upon this point that I must 
illustrate. At one place Macaulay writes: "Do 
we believe that Erasmus and Fracastorius wrote 
Latin as well as Dr. Eobertson and Sir Walter 
Scott wrote English? And are there not in the 
Dissertation on India, the last of Dr. Eobertson 's 
works, in Waverley, in Marmion, Scotticisms at 
which a London apprentice would laugh?" Why 
should we be told (to pick out one of these half- 
dozen allusions) that Dr. Eobertson's first name was 
William, that he lived from 1721 to 1793, and 
that he wrote such and such books? With all 
respect for the memory of Dr. Eobertson, I submit 



10 PREFACE 

that this is not the place to learn about him and 
his histories. Macaulay's allusion to him is not 
explained in the least by giving his date. Yet 
there is something here to interpret, simple though 
it be. Let us put questions until we are sure that 
the pupil understands that Dr. Eobertson, being a 
Scot, could not write wholly idiomatic English — 
English, say, of the London type — and that this is 
one illustration of the general truth that a man 
can write with purity only in his native tongue. 
It is such exercises in interpretation that I should 
like to see substituted for the disastrous game of 
hunting allusions. 

I cannot flatter myself that I have achieved con- 
sistency in my own notes and glossary. To recur 
to the illustration above, I have omitted the name 
of Dr. Eobertson, because Macaulay seems to tell 
us enough about him, while I have added a few 
words about Fracastorius in order that he may be 
to the reader something more than a name. But 
I cannot help suspecting that it is a waste of 
energy for any one to try to impress even this name 
on his mind, and I should be quite satisfied that a 
pupil of mine should never look it up, provided 
he had alertness enough to see that Fracastorius 
wrote in Latin though he was not a Roman, and 
discrimination enough to feel that there are other 
allusions of an entirely different character which 
must be looked up. 

The glossary aims to include only names and 



PREFACE 11 

terms not familiar or easily found (provided they 
need explaining), and also names which, thgugh 
easily found, call for some special comment. In 
general, when allusions are self-explaining, we 
should rest content with our text. 

The text adopted is that of Lady Trevelyan's 
edition, with very slight changes in spelling, punc- 
tuation, and capitals. A. G. N. 

Stanford University, January, 1903. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 7 

Introduction 15 

Chronology and Bibliography ... 43 
The Essays: 

The Life and Writings of Addison . . 45 

Samuel Johnson 170 

Notes 231 

Glossary 244 



INTRODUCTION 



When, in 1825, Francis Jeffrey, Editor of the 
Edinburgh Review^ searching for "some clever 

vent in the Edin- lis, "laid his hands upon Thomas 
burgh Review, g^^ington Macaulaj, he did not 
know that he was marking a red-letter day in the 
calendar of English journalism. Through the two 
decades and more of its existence, the Review had 
gone on serving its patrons with the respectable 
dulness of Lord Brougham and the respectable 
vivacity of its editor, and the patrons had appar- 
ently dreamed of nothing better until the 
momentous August when the young Fellow of 
Trinity, not yet twenty-five, flashed upon its pages 
with his essay on Milton. And for the next two 
decades the essays that followed from the same pen 
became so far the mainstay of the magazine that 
booksellers declared it "sold, or did not sell, 
according as there were, or were not, articles by 
Mr. Macaulay." Yet Jeffrey was not without 
some inkling of the significance of the event, for 
upon receipt of the first manuscript he wrote to its 
author the words so often quoted: ^*The more I 
think, the less I can conceive where you picked 

15 



16 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

up that style." Thus early was the finger of 
criticism pointed toward the one thing that has 
always been most conspicuously associated with 
Macaulay's name. 

English prose, at this date, was still clinging to 

the traditions of its measured eighteenth-century 

stateliness. But the life had 

2. £ffect on Prose. « . n i 

nearly gone out of it, and the 
formalism which sat so elegantly upon Addison 
and not uneasily upon Johnson had stiffened into 
pedantry, scarcely relieved by the awkward 
attempts of the younger journalists to give it spirit 
and freedom. It was this languishing prose which 
Macaulay, perhaps more than any other one writer, 
deserves the credit of rejuvenating with that 
wonderful something which Jeffrey was pleased 
to call "style." Macaulay himself would certainly 
have deprecated the association of his fame with a 
mere synonym for rhetoric, and we should be 
wronging him if we did not hasten to add that 
style, rightly understood, is a very large and 
significant thing, comprehending, indeed, a man's 
whole intellectual and emotional attitude toward 
those phases of life with which he comes into con- 
tact. It is the man's manner of reacting upon the 
world, his manner of expressing himself to the 
world ; and the world has little beyond the man- 
ner of a man's expression by which to judge of the 
man himself. But a good style, even in its nar- 
row sense of a good command of language, of a 



INTRODUCTION 17 

masterly and individual manner of presenting 
thought, is yet no mean accomplishment, and if 
Macaulay had done nothing else than revivify 
English prose, which is, just possibly, his most 
enduring achievement, he would have little reason 
to complain. What he accomplished in this 
direction and how, it is our chief purpose here to 
explain. In the meantime we shall do well to 
glance at his other achievements and take some 
note of his equipment. 

Praed has left this description of him: ''There 
came up a short, manly figure, marvelously upright, 
with a bad neckcloth, and one 
hand in his waistcoat-pocket." 
We read here, easily enough, brusqueness, pre- 
cision without fastidiousness, and self-confidence. 
These are all prominent traits of the man, and 
they all show in his work. Add kindness and 
moral rectitude, which scarcely show there, and 
humor, which shows only in a somewhat unpleasant 
light, and you have a fair portrait. Now these are 
manifestly the attributes of a man who knows 
what worldly comfort and physical well-being are, 
a man of good digestive and assimilative powers, 
well-fed, incapable of worry, born to succeed. 

In truth, Macaulay was a man of remarkable 
vitality and energy, and though he died too early 
— at the beginning of his sixtieth year — he began 
his work young and continued it with almost 
unabated vigor to the end. But his ''work" (as 



18 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

we are in the habit of naming that which a man 
leaves behind him), voluminous as it is, represents 
only one side of his activity. There was the 
early-assumed burden of repairing his father's 
broken fortunes, and providing for the family of 
younger brothers and sisters. The burden, it is 
true, was assumed with characteristic cheerfulness 
— ^it could not destroy for him the worldly comfort 
we have spoken of — but it entailed heavy responsi- 
bilities for a young man. It forced him to seek 
salaried positions, such as the post of commissioner 
of bankruptcy, when he might have been more 
congenially employed. Then there were the many 
years spent in the service of the government as a 
Whig member of the House of Commons and as 
Cabinet Minister dmdng the exciting period of the 
Eeform Bill and the Anti-Corn-Law League, with 
all that such service involved — study of politics, 
canvassing, countless dinners, public and private, 
speech-making in Parliament and out, reading and 
making reports, endless committee meetings, end- 
less sessions. There were the three years and a 
half spent in India, drafting a penal code. And 
there was, first and last, the acquisition of the 
knowledge that made possible this varied activity, 
— the years at the University, the study of law and 
jurisprudence, the reading, not of books, but of 
entire national literatures, the ransacking of 
libraries and the laborious deciphering of hundreds 
of manuscripts in the course of historical 



INTRODUCTION 19 

research. Perhaps we fall into Macaulay's trick 
of exaggeration, but it is not easy to exaggerate the 
mental feats of a man who could carry in his 
memory works like Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's 
Progress and who was able to put it on record 
that in thirteen months he had read thirty clas- 
sical authors, most of them entire and many of 
them twice, and among them such voluminous 
writers as Euripides, Herodotus, Plato, Plutarch, 
Livy, and Cicero. Nor was the classical literature 
a special field; Italian, Spanish, French, and the 
wildernesses of the English drama and the Eng- 
lish novel (not excluding the "trashy") were all 
explored. We may well be astounded that the 
man who could do all these things in a lifetime 
of moderate compass, and who was besides such a 
tireless pedestrian that he was ''forever on his feet 
indoors as well as out," could find time to produce 
so much literature of his own. 

That literature — so to style the body of work 

which has survived him — divides itself into at least 

five divisions. There are, first, 

4. His Work. , ^ 

the Essays, which he produced 
at intervals all through life. There are the 
Speeches which were delivered on the floor of 
Parliament between his first election in 1830 and 
his last in 1852, and which rank very high in that 
grade of oratory which is just below the highest. 
There is the Indian Penal Code, not altogether his 
own work and not literature of course, yet praised 



20 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

by Justice Stephen as one of the most remarkable 
and satisfactory instruments of its kind ever 
drafted. There are the Poems, published in 
18425 adding little to his fame and not a great 
deal to English literature, yet very respectable 
achievements in the field of the modern romantic 
ballad. Finally, there is the unfinished History of 
England from the Accession of James the Second, 
his last, his most ambitious, and probably, all 
things considered, his most successful work. 

The History and Essays comprise virtually all of 
this product that the present generation cares to 

5. History of read. Upon the History, indeed, 
England. Macaulay staked his claim to 
future remembrance, regarding it as the great work 
of his life. He was exceptionally well equipped 
for the undertaking. He had such a grasp of uni- 
versal history as few men have been able to secure, 
and a detailed knowledge of the period of English 
history under contemplation equalled by none. 
But he delayed the undertaking too long, and he 
allowed his time and energy to be dissipated in 
obedience to party calls. Death overtook him in 
the midst of his labors. Even thus, it is clear 
that he underestimated the magnitude of the task 
he had set himself. For he proposed to cover a 
period of nearly a century and a half; the four 
volumes and a fraction which he completed actually 
cover about fifteen years. His plan involved too 
much detail. It has been called pictorial history 



INTRODUCTION 21 

writing, and such it was. History was to be as 
vital and as human as romance. It was to be in 
every sense a restoration of the life of the past. 
Macaulay surely succeeded in this aim, as his 
fascinating third chapter will always testify; 
whether the aim were a laudable one, we cannot 
stop here to discuss. Historians will continue to 
point out the defects of the work, its diffuseness, 
its unphilosophical character, perhaps its partisan 
spirit. But it remains a magnificent fragment, and 
it will be read by thousands who could never be 
persuaded to look into dryer though possibly 
sounder works. Indeed, there is no higher tribute 
to its greatness than the objection that has some- 
times been brought against it, namely, that it 
treats a comparatively unimportant era of Eng- 
land's history with such fulness and brilliance, and 
has attracted to it so many readers, that the other 
eras are thrown sadly out of perspective. 

But Macaulay's name is popularly associated 

with that body of Essays which in bulk alone 

(always excepting Sainte- 

6. Essays. \ J r i=> 

Beuve's) are scarcely exceeded 
by the product of any other essay-writer in an 
essay-writing age. And the popular judgment 
which has insisted upon holding to this sup- 
posedly ephemeral work is not far wrong. With 
all their faults upon them, until we have something 
better in kind to replace them, we cannot consent 
to let them go. In one sense, their range is not 



22 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

wide, for they fall naturally into but two divisions, 
the historical and the critical. To these Mr. 
Morison would add a third, the controversial, 
comprising the four essays on Mill, Sadler, 
Southey, and Gladstone ; but these are comparatively 
unimportant. In another sense, however, their 
range is very wide. For each one gathers about a 
central subject a mass of details that in the hands 
of any other writer would be bewildering, while 
the total knowledge that supports the bare arrays 
of fact and perpetual press of allusions betrays a 
scope that, to the ordinary mind, is quite beyond 
comprehension. 

' And the more remarkable must this work appear 
when we consider the manner of its production. 
Most of the essays were published anonymously in 
the Edinlurgh Revieiu^ a few early ones in 
Knight's Quarterly Magazine^ five (those on 
Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Johnson, and 
Pitt), written late in life, in the Encyclopcedia 
Britannica, The writing of them was always an 
avocation with Macaulay, never a vocation. Those 
produced during his parliamentary life were usually 
written in the hours between early rising and 
breakfast. Some were composed at a distance 
from his books. He scarcely dreamed of their 
living beyond the quarter of their publication, cer- 
tainly not beyond the generation for whose enter- 
tainment they were written with all the devices to 
catch applause and all the disregard of permanent 



INTRODUCTION 33 

merit which, writing for such a purpose invites. 
He could scarcely be induced, even after they were 
pirated and republished in America, to reissue 
them in a collected edition, with his revision and 
under his name. These facts should be remem- 
bered in mitigation of the severe criticism to which 
they are sometimes subjected. 

Between the historical and the critical essays we 
are not called upon to decide, though the decision 
is by no means difficult. Macaulay was essentially 
a historian, a story-teller, and the historical essay, 
or short monograph on the events of a single period 
that usually group themselves about some great 
statesman or soldier, he made peculiarly his own. 
He did not invent it, as Mr. Morison points out, 
but he expanded and improved it until he "left it 
complete and a thing of power." Fully a score of 
his essays — more than half the total number — are 
of this description, the most and the best of them 
dealing with English history. Chief among them 
are the essays on Hallam, Temple, the Pitts, Clive, 
and Warren Hastings. The critical essays — upon 
Johnson, Addison, Bunyan, and other men of 
letters — are in every way as admirable reading as 
the historical. They must take a lower rank only 
because Macaulay lacked some of the prime 
requisites of a successful critic — broad and deep 
sympathies, refined tastes, and nice perception of 
the more delicate tints and shadings that count for 
almost everything in a work of high art. His 



24 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

critical judgments are likely to be blunt, positive, 
and superficial. But they are neyer actually shal- 
low and rarely without a modicum of truth. And 
they are never uninteresting. For, true to his 
narrative instinct, he always interweaves biog- 
raphy. And besides, the essays have the same 
rhetorical qualities that mark with distinction 
all the prose he has written, that is to say, the 
same masterly method and the same compelling 
style. It is to this method and style, that, after 
our rapid review of Macaulay's aims and accom- 
plishments, we are now ready to turn. 

There were two faculties of Macaulay's mind 
that set his work far apart from other work in 

7. Organizing the samc field — the faculties of 
Faculty. organization and illustration. 
He saw things in their right relation and he knew 
how to make others see them thus. If he was 
describing, he never thrust minor details into the 
foreground. If he was narrating, he never "got 
ahead of his story." The importance of this is not 
sufficiently recognized. Many writers do not know 
what organization means. They do not know that 
in all great and successful literary work it is nine- 
tenths of the labor. Yet consider a moment. 
History is a very complex thing : divers events may 
be simultaneous in their occurrence ; or one crisis 
may be slowly evolving from many causes in many 
places. It is no light task to tell these things one 
after another and yet leave a unified impression, to 



INTRODUCTION 25 

take up a dozen new threads in succession without 
tangling them and without losing the old ones, and 
to lay them all down at the right moment and 
without confusion. Such is the narrator's task, 
and it was at this task that Macaulay proved him- 
self a past master. He could dispose of a number 
of trivial events in a single sentence. Thus, for 
example, runs his account of the dramatist 
Wycherley's naval career: ''He embarked, was 
present at a battle, and celebrated it, on his 
return, in a copy of verses too bad for the bell- 
man." On the other hand, when it is a question 
of a great crisis, like the impeachment of Warren 
Hastings, he knew how to prepare for it with 
elaborate ceremony and to portray it in a scene of 
the highest dramatic power. 

This faculty of organization shows itself in what 
we technically name structure; and logical and 
rhetorical structure may be studied at their very best 
in his work. His essays are perfect units, made 
up of many parts, systems within systems, that 
play together without clog or friction. You can 
take them apart like a watch and put them 
together again. But try to rearrange the parts and 
the mechanism is spoiled. Each essay has its 
subdivisions, which in turn are groups of para- 
graphs. And each paragraph is a unit. Take the 
first paragraph of the essay on Milton : the word 
manuscript appears in the first sentence, and it 
reappears in the last ; clearly the paragraph deals 



26 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

with a single very definite topic. And so with all. 
Of course the unity manifests itself in a hundred 
ways, but it is rarely wanting. Most frequently it 
takes the form of an expansion of a topic given in 
the first sentence, or a preparation for a topic to 
be announced only in the last. These initial and 
final sentences — often in themselves both aphoristic 
and memorable — serve to mark with the utmost 
clearness the different stages in the progress of the 
essay. 

Illustration is of more incidental service, but as 
used by Macaulay becomes highly organic. For 

8. niustrating bis illustrations are not far- 
Facuity. fetched or laboriously worked 
out. They seem to be of one piece with his story 
or his argument. His mind was quick to detect re- 
semblances and analogies. He was ready with a 
comparison for everything, sometimes with half a 
dozen. For example, Addison's essays, he has 
occasion to say, were different every day of the week, 
and yet, to his mind, each day like something — 
like Horace, like Lucian, like the ** Tales of 
Scheherezade."^ He draws long comparisons 
between Walpole and Townshend, between Con- 
greve and Wycherley, between Essex and Villiers, 
between the fall of the Carlo vingians and the fall 
of the Moguls. He follows up a general statement 
with swarms of instances. Have historians been 
given to exaggerating the villainy of Machiavelli? 
Macaulay can name you half a dozen who did so. 



INTRODUCTION 27 

Did the writers of Charles's faction delight in mak- 
ing their opponents appear contemptible? ''They 
have told us that Pym broke down in a speech, 
that Ireton had his nose pulled by HoUis, that the 
Earl of Northumberland cudgelled Henry Marten, 
that St. John's manners were sullen, that Vane 
had an ugly face, that Cromwell had a red nose." 
Do men fail when they quit their own province for 
another? Newton failed thus ; Ben tley failed ; Inigo 
Jones failed ; Wilkie failed. In the same way he 
was ready with quotations. He writes in one of 
his letters: ''It is a dangerous thing for a man 
with a very strong memory to read very much. I 
could give you three or four quotations this 
moment in support of that proposition; but I will 
bring the vicious propensity under subjection, if I 
can." Thus we see his mind doing instantly and 
involuntarily what other minds do with infinite 
pains, bringing together all things that have a 
likeness or a common bearing. 

Both of these faculties, for organization and for 

illustration, are to be partially explained by his 

marvelous memory. As we have 

9. Memory. "^ 

seen, he read everything, and he 
seems to have been incapable of forgetting any- 
thing. The immense advantage which this gave 
him over other men is obvious. He who carries 
his library in his mind wastes no time in turning 
up references. And surveying the whole field of 
his knowledge at once, with outlines and details 



28 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

all in immediate range, he should be able to see 
things in their natural perspective. Of course it 
does not follow that a great memory will always 
enable a man to systematize and synthesize, but it 
should make it easier for its possessor than for other 
men, while the power of ready illustration which 
it affords him is beyond question. 

It is precisely these talents that set Macaulay 
among the simplest and clearest of writers, and 

10. Clearness and that aCCOUUt f Or mUCh of his 

simpucity. popularity. People found that in 
taking up one of his articles they simply read on 
and on, never puzzling over the meaning of a 
sentence, getting the exact force of every state- 
ment, and following the trend of thought with 
scarcely a mental effort. And his natural gift of 
making things plain he took pains to support by 
various devices. He constructed his sentences 
after the simplest normal fashion, subject and 
verb and object, sometimes inverting for emphasis, 
but rarely complicating, and always reducing 
expression to the barest terms. He could write, 
for example, ''One advantage the chaplain had, " 
but it is impossible to conceive of his writing, 
"Now amid all the discomforts and disadvantages 
with which the unfortunate chaplain was sur- 
rounded, there was one thing which served to offset 
them, and which, if he chose to take the oppor. 
tunity of enjoying it, might well be regarded as a 
positive advantage." One will search his pages in 



INTRODUCTION 29 

vain for loose, trailing clauses and involved con- 
structions. His vocabulary was of the same simple 
nature. He had a complete command of ordinary 
English and contented himself with that. He 
rarely ventured beyond the most abridged diction- 
ary. An occasional technical term might be- re- 
quired, but he was shy of the unfamiliar. He 
would coin no words and he would use no 
archaisms. Foreign words, when fairly naturalized, 
he employed sparingly. "We shall have no dis- 
putes about diction," he wrote to Napier, Jeffrey's 
successor; "the English language is not so poor 
but that I may very well find in it the means of 
contenting both you and myself." 

Now all of these things are wholly admirable, 
and if they constituted the sum total of Macaulay's 
method, as they certainly do con- 
stitute the chief features of it, we 
should pass our word of praise and have done. 
But he did not stop here, and often, unfortun- 
ately too often, these things are not thought of at 
all by those who profess to speak knowingly of his 
wonderful "style." For in addition to clearness he 
sought also force, an entirely legitimate object in 
itself and one in which he was merely giving way to 
his oratorical or journalistic instinct. Only, his 
fondness for effect led him too far and into vai*ious 
mannerisms, some of which it is quite impossible 
to approve. There is no question that they are 
powerfully effective, as they were meant to be, 



30 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

often rightly so, and they are exceedingly interest- 
ing to study, but for these very reasons the student 
needs to be warned against attaching to them an 
undue importance. 

Perhaps no one will quarrel with his liking for 

the specific and the concrete. This indeed is not 

mannerism. It is the natural 

12. Concreteness. - i . . . - -, 

working of the imaginative mmd, 
of the picturing faculty, and is of the utmost yalue 
in forceful, vivid writing. The * 'ruffs and peaked 
beards of Theobald's" make an excellent passing 
allusion to the social life of the time of Queen 
Elizabeth and James the First. The manoeuvres 
of an army become intensely interesting when we 
see it "pouring through those wild passes which, 
worn by mountain torrents and dark with jungle, 
lead down from the table-land of Mysore to the 
plains of the Carnatic." A reference to the 
reputed learning of the English ladies of the six- 
teenth century is most cunningly put in the picture 
of ''those fair pupils of Ascham and Aylmer who 
compared, over their embroidery, the styles of 
Isocrates and Lysias, and who, while the horns 
were sounding, and the dogs in full cry, sat in the 
lonely oriel, with eyes riveted to that immortal 
page which tells how meekly the first great martyr 
of intellectual liberty took the cup from his weep- 
ing gaoler." But when his eagerness for the con- 
cretely picturesque leads him to draw a wholly 
imaginary picture of how it may have come about 



INTRODUCTION 31 

that Addison had Steele arrested for debt, we are 
quite ready to protest. 

His tendency to exaggerate, moreover, and his 

love of paradox, belong in a very different 

category. Let the reader count 

13. X:xas:g:eration. ^ ^ ^ _ ... 

the strong words, superlatives, 
universal propositions, and the like, employed in a 
characteristic passage, and he will understand at 
once what is meant. In the essay on Frederic the 
Great we read: "No sovereign has ever taken 
possession of a throne by a clearer title. All the 
politics of the Austrian cabinet had, during twenty 
years, been directed to one single end — the settle- 
ment of the succession. From every person whose 
rights could be considered as injuriously affected, 
renunciations in the most solemn form had been 
obtained." And not content with the ordinary 
resources of language, he has a trick of raising 
superlatives themselves, as it were, to the second 
or third power. "There can be little doubt that 
this great empire was, even in its best days, far 
worse governed than the worst governed parts of 
Europe now are." "What the Italian is to the 
Englishman, what the Hindoo is to the Italian, 
what the Bengalee is to other Hindoos, that was 
Nuncomar to other Bengalees." It is evident that 
this habit is a positive vice. He tried to excuse it 
on the ground that there is some inevitable loss in 
the communication of a fact from one mind to 
another, and that over -statement is necessary to 



32 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

correct the error. But the argument is fallacious. 
Macaulay did not have a monopoly of the imagi- 
native faculty : other men are as much given to 
exaggeration as he, and stories, as they pass from 
mouth to mouth, invariably ^'grow." 

His constant resort to antithesis to point his 
statements is another vice. ''That government," 
14. Antithesis and he writcs of the English rule in 
Balance. India, ''opprcssivo as the most 
oppressive form of barbarian despotism, was strong 
with all the strength of civilization." Again: 
^'The Puritan had affected formality; the comic 
poet laughed at decorum. The Puritan had 
frowned at innocent diversions; the comic poet 
took under his patronage the most flagitious 
excesses. The Puritan had canted; the comic 
poet blasphemed." And so on, through a para- 
graph. Somewhat similar to this is his practice of 
presenting the contrary of a statement before pre- 
senting the statement itself, of telling us, for 
example, what might have been expected to happen 
before telling us what actually did happen. It is 
to be noticed that, accompanying this use of 
antithesis and giving it added force, there is 
usually a balance of form, that is, a more or less 
exact correspondence of sentence structure. Given 
one of Macaulay's sentences presenting the first 
part of an antithesis, it is sometimes possible to 
foretell, word for word, what the next sentence 
will be. Such mechanical writing is certainly not 



INTRODUCTION 33 

to be commended as a model of style. Of course 
it is the abuse of these things and not the mere use 
of them that constitutes Macaulay's vice. 

There are still other formal devices which he 

uses so freely that we are justified in calling them 

mannerisms. One of the most 

15. Minor Devices. . • i i t i i 

conspicuous IS the short sentence, 
the blunt, unqualified statement of one thing at a 
time. No one who knows Macaulay would hesitate 
over the authorship of the following: ^'The shore 
was rocky: the night was black: the wind was 
furious: the waves of the Bay of Biscay ran high." 
The only wonder is that he did not punctuate it 
with four periods. He would apparently much 
rather repeat his subject and make a new sentence 
than connect his verbs. Instead of writing, '*He 
coaxed and wheedled," he is constantly tempted 
to write, '*He coaxed, he wheedled," even though 
the practice involves prolonged reiteration of one 
form. The omission of connectives — ^rhetorical 
'^asyndeton" — becomes itself a vice. The ands^ 
ihens^ there/ores^ howevers, the reader must supply 
for himself. This demands alertness and helps to 
sustain interest; and while it may occasion a 
momentary perplexity, it will rarely do so when the 
reader comes to know the style and to read it with 
the right swing. But it all goes to enforce what 
Mr. John Morley calls the ''unlovely staccato" of 
the style. It strikes harsh on the ear and on the 
brain, and from a piquant stimulant becomes an 



34 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

intolerable weariness. Separate things get 
emphasis, but the nice gradations and relations are 
sacrificed. 

After all, though we stigmatize these things as 
•^devices," intimating that they were mechanical 
and arbitraw, we must regard 
them as partly temperamental. 
Macaulay's mind was not subtle in its working and 
was not given to making nice distinctions. He 
cared chiefly for bold outlines and broad effects. 
Truth, to his mind, was sharply defined from false- 
hood, right from wrong, good from evil. Every- 
thing could be divided from everything else, 
labeled, and pigeon-holed. And he was very 
certain, in the fields which he chose to enter, that 
he knew where to draw the dividing lines. Posi- 
tiveness, self-confidence, are written all over his 
work. Set for a moment against his method the 
method of Matthew Arnold. This is how Arnold 
tries to point out a defect in modern English 
society: '^And, owing to the same causes, does 
not a subtle criticism lead us to make, even on the 
good looks and politeness of our aristocratic class, 
and even of the most fascinating half of that class, 
the feminine half, the one qualifying remark, that 
in these charming gifts there should perhaps be, 
for ideal perfection, a shade more soulf^ Note 
the careful approach, the constant, anxious qualifi- 
cation, working up to a climax in the almost 
painful hesitation of *'a shade — more — souL'*^ 



INTRODUCTION 35 

Imagine, if you can, Macaulay, the rough rider, 
he of the "stamping emphasis," winding into a 
truth like that. But indeed it is quite impossible 
to imagine Macaulay 's having any truth at all to 
enunciate about so ethereal an attribute as this 
same souh 

We have come well into the region of Macaulay's 
defects. Clearness, we have seen, he had in a 

17. Ornament, remarkable degree. Force he also 
Rhythm. j^g^^ jj^ ^ remarkable degree, 
though he frequently abused the means of display- 
ing it. But genuine beauty, it is scarcely too 
much to say, he had not at all. Of course, much 
depends upon our definitions. We do not mean to 
deny to his wi'itings all elements of charm. The 
very ease of his mastery over so many resources of 
composition gives pleasure to the reader. His 
frequent picturesqueness we have granted. He 
can be genuinely figurative, though his figures 
often incline to showiness. And above all he has 
a certain sense for rhythm. He can write long, 
sweeping sentences — ^periods that rise and descend 
with the feeling, and that come to a stately or 
graceful close. The sentence cited above about 
the learning of women in the sixteenth century 
may be taken as an example. Or read the sketch 
of the Catholic Church in the third paragraph of 
the essay on Von Eanke's History of the Popes, or 
the conclusion of the essay on Lord Holland, or 
better still the conclusion of the somewhat juvenile 



36 MAC AULA Y'S ESSAYS 

essay on Mitford's Greece, with its glowing trib- 
ute to Athens and its famous picture of the * 'single 
naked fisherman washing his nets in the river of 
the ten thousand masts." But at best it is the 
rhythm of mere declamation, swinging and 
pompous. There is no fine flowing movement, 
nothing like the entrancing glides of a waltz or the 
airy steps of a minuet, but only a steady march to 
the interminable and monotonous beat of the 
drum. For real music, sweetness, subtle and 
involved harmony, lingering cadences, we turn to 
any one of a score of proge writers — Sir Thomas 
Browne, Addison, Burke, Lamb, De Quincey, Haw- 
thorne, Euskin, Pater, Stevenson — before we turn 
to Macaulay. Nor is there any other mere grace 
of composition in which he can be said to excel. 

There is no blame in the matter. We are only 

trying to note dispassionately the defects as well 

18. Tempera- as the cxcellences of a man who 

mental Defects, y^^ -j^qj- ^ universal gcnius. It 

would be easy to point out much greater defects 
than any yet mentioned, defects that go deeper 
than style. One or two indeed we are obliged to 
mention. There is the strain of coarseness often 
to be noted in his writing, showing itself now in an 
abusive epithet, now in a vulgar catch-word, now 
in a sally of humor bordering on the ribald. It is 
never grossly offensive, but it is none the less 
wounding to a delicate sensibility. Then there is 
the Philistine attitude, which Mr. Arnold spent so 



INTRODUCTION 37 

much of his life in combating, the attitude of the 
complacent, self-satisfied Englishman, who sees in 
the British constitution and the organization of the 
British empire the best of all possible governments, 
and in the material and comm^ercial progress of the 
age the best of all possible civilizations. And 
there is the persistent refusal to treat questions of 
really great moral significance upon any kind of 
moral basis. The absolute right or wrong of an 
act Macaulay will avoid discussing if he possibly 
can, and take refuge in questions of policy, of sheer 
profit and loss. We shall not blame him severely 
for even these serious shortcomings. On the first 
point we remember that he was deliberately play- 
ing to his audience, consciously writing down to 
the level of his public. On the second we realize 
that he was a practical politician and that he never 
could have been such with the idealism of a Car- 
lyle or a Euskin. And on the third we remember 
that his own private life was one of affectionate 
sacrifice and his public life absolutely stainless. 
He could vote away his own income when moral 
conviction demanded it. Besides, even when 
he was only arguing, "policy" was always on the 
side of the right. What blame is left? Only 
this — that he should have pandered to any 
public, compromising his future fame for an 
ephemeral applause, and that he should have so far 
wronged the mass of his readers as to suppose that 
arguments based upon policy would be more 



• 38 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

acceptable to them than arguments based upon 
sound moral principles. That he was something of 
a Philistine and not wholly a * 'child of light," may 
be placed to his discount but not to his discredit. 
The total indictment is small and is mentioned 
here only in the interests of impartial criticism. 

It remains only to sum up the literary signifi- 
cance of Macaulay's work. Nearly all of that 
19. i^iterary work, WO must remember, lies 
Significance. Qutsidc of the field of what we 
know as ''pure literature." Pm^e literature — 
poetry, drama, fiction — is a pure artistic or imagi- 
native product with entertainment as its chief aim. 
Though it may instruct incidentally, it does not 
merely inform. It is the work of creative genius. 
Macaulay's essays were meant to inform. Char- 
acters and situations are delineated in them, but 
not created. History and criticism are often not 
literature at all. They become literature only 
by revealing an imaginative insight and clothing 
themselves in artistic form. Macaulay's essays 
have done this ; they engage the emotions as well 
as the intellect. They were meant for records, 
for storehouses of information ; but they are also 
works of art, and therefore they live intact while 
the records of equally industrious but less gifted 
historians are revised and replaced. Thus by their 
artistic quality, style in a word, they are removed 
from the shelves of history to the shelves of litera- 
ture. 



INTRODUCTION 39 

It becomes plain, perhaps, why at the outset we 
spoke of style. One hears little about Shaks- 
pere's style, or Scott's, or Shelley's. Where there 
are matters of larger interest — character, dra- 
matic situations, passion, lofty conceptions, 
abstract truth — there is little room for attention to 
so superficial a quality, or rather to a quality that 
has some such superficial aspects. But in the 
work of less creative writers, a purely literary inter- 
est, if it be aroused at all, must centre chiefly in 
this. And herein lies Macaulay's significance to 
the literary world to-day. 

Upon the professional writers of that world, 
as distinct from the readers, his influence has been 
20. Influence on HO Icss than prof ouud, partly for 
jonrnausm. ^yil, but chicfly, WO think (Mr. 
Morley notwithstanding), for good. His name 
was mentioned at the beginning of our sketch in 
connection with journalism. It is just because 
the literaj-y development of our age has moved so 
rapidly along this line, that Macaulay's influence 
has been so far-reaching. The journalist must 
have an active pen. He cannot indulge in medi- 
tation while the ink dries. He cannot stop to 
arrange and rearrange his ideas, to study the 
cadence of his sentences, to seek for the unique or 
the suggestive word. What Macaulay did was to 
furnish the model of just such a style as would 
meet this need — ^ready, easy, rapid, yet never loose 
or obscure. He seems to have found his way by 



40 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

instinct to all those expedients which make writing 
easy — short, direct sentences, commonplace words, 
constant repetition and balance of form, adapted 
quotations, and stock phrases from the Bible or 
Prayer-Book or from the language of the profes- 
sions, politics, and trade. This style he impressed 
upon a generation of journalists that was ready to 
receive it and keenly alive to its value. 

The word journalist is scarcely broad enough to 
cover the class of writers here meant. For the 
class includes, in addition to the great "press 
tribe" from editor to reporter and reviewer, every 
writer of popular literature, every one who appeals 
to a miscellaneous public, who undertakes to 
make himself a medium between special intelli- 
gence and general intelligence. And there are 
thousands of these writers to-day — in editorial 
chairs, on magazine staffs, on political, educa- 
tional, and scientific commissions — ^who are con- 
sciously or unconsciously employing the convenient 
instrument which Macaulay did so much toward 
perfecting seventy-five years ago. The evidence 
is on every hand. One listens to a lecture by a 
scientist who, it is quite possible, never read a 
paragraph of Macaulay, and catches, before long, 
words like these: ''There is no reversal of 
nature's processes. The world has come from a 
condition of things essentially different from the 
present. It is moving toward a condition of things 
essentially different from the present." Or one 



INTRODUCTION 41 

turns to an editorial in a daily paper and reads; 
*'It will be ever thus with all the movements in 
this country to which a revolutionary interpreta- 
tion can be attached. The mass and body of the 
people of the United States are a level-headed, 
sober-minded people. They are an upright and a 
solvent people. They love their government. 
They are proud of their government. Its credit is 
dear to them. Enlisted in its cause, party lines 
sag loose upon the voters or disappear altogether 
from their contemplation." The ear-marks are 
very plain to see. 

We would not make the mistake of attributing 
too many and too large effects to a single cause. 
Life and art are very complex matters and the 
agencies at work are quite beyond our calculation. 
There is always danger of exaggerating the impor- 
tance of a single influence. The trend of things is 
not easily disturbed — the history of the world never 
yet turned upon the cast of a die or the length of a 
woman's nose. In spite of Jeffrey's testimony — and 
it cannot be lightly brushed aside — we are not ready 
to give Macaulay the whole credit for inventing this 
style. Nor do we believe that journalism would be 
materially different from what it is to-day, even 
though Macaulay had never written a line. But it 
does not seem too much to admit that the first 
vigorous impulse came from him and that the 
manner is deservedly associated with his name. 

In itself, as has been pointed out, it is not a 



48 MACAULAY^S ESSAYS 

beautiful thing. It is a thing of mannerisms, and 
these we have not hesitated to call vices. From 
the point of view of literature they are yicesj 
blemishes on the face of true art. But the style 
is useful none the less. The ready writer is not 
concerned about beauty, he does not profess to be 
an artist. He has intelligence to convey, and the 
simplest and clearest medium is for his purpose the 
best. He will continue to use this serviceable 
medium nor trouble himself about its "unlovely 
staccato" and its gaudy tinsel. Meanwhile the 
literary artist may pursue his way in search of a 
more elusive music and a more iridescent beauty, 
satisfied with the tithe of Macaulay's popularity if 
only he can attain to some measure of his own ideals. 

But Macaulay himself should be remembered for 
his real greatness. The facile imitator of the 

»i. Real Great- tricks of hfe pen should beware 
ness. of tiie ingratitude of assuming 

that these were the measure of his mind. These 
vices are virtues in their place, but they are not 
high virtues, and they are not the virtues that made 
Macaulay great. His greatness lay in the qualities 
that we have tried to insist upon from the first, 
qualities that are quite beyond imitation, the power 
of bringing instantly into one mental focus the accu- 
mulations of a prodigious memory, and the range of 
vision, the grasp of detail, and the insight into men, 
measures, and events, that enabled him to reduce 
to beautiful order the chaos of human history. 



CHKONOLOGY AND BIBLIOGEAPHY 



1800. Macaulay born, Oct. 25, at Rothley Temple, 

Leicestershire. 
1818. Entered Trinity College, Cambridge. (B. A., 

1822; M. A., 1825.) 

1823. Began contributing to Knighfs Quarterly Maga- 

zine. 

1824. Elected Fellow of Trinity. 

1825. Began contributing to Edinburgh Review. 

1826. Called to the Bar. 

1830. Entered Parliament. 

1831. Speeches on Eeform Bill. 

1834. Went to India as member of the Supreme Coun- 
cil. 

1837. Indian Penal Code. 

1838. Returned to England. Tour in Italy. 

1839. Elected to Parliament for Edinburgh. Secretary 

at War. 

1842. Lays of Ancient Rome. 

1843. Collected edition of Essays. 

1848. History of England, vols. i. and ii. (Vols. ill. 

and iv. 1855; vol. v. 1861.) 
1852. Failure in health. 
1857. Made Baron Macaulay of Rothley. 
1859. Died Dec. 28. (Interred in Westminster Abbey. ) 
The standard edition of Macaulay's works is that 
edited by his sister. Lady Trevelyan, in eight volumes, 
and published at London, 1866 ; reprinted at New York, 
by Harper Bros. The authorized biography is that by his 
nephew, G. O. Trevelyan, a book which is exceedingly 
interesting and^which takes high rank among English 

4B 



44 MACAULAY^S ESSAYS 

biographies. J. Cotter Morison's life in the English 
Men of Letters series is briefer, is both biographical and 
critical, and is in every way an admirable work. There 
are also the articles in the Encyclopcedia Britannica, by 
Mark Pattison, and in the Dictionary of National 
Biography, by Mr. Leslie Stephen. The best critical 
essays are those by Mr. Leslie Stephen in Hours in a 
Library, by Mr. John Morley in Miscellanies, and by 
Walter Bagehot in Literary Studies. 



THE LIFE AND WEITIKGS 
OF ADDISOI^ 



The Life of Joseph Addison. By Lucy Aikin. 2 vols., 
8vo. London: 1843. 

Some reviewers are of opinion that a lady who 
dares to publish a book renounces by that act the 
franchises appertaining to her sex, and can claim 
no exemption from the utmost rigor of critical 

5 procedure. From that opinion we dissent. We 
admit, indeed, that in a country which boasts of 
many female writers, eminently qualified by their 
talents and acquirements to influence the public 
mind, it would be of most pernicious consequence 

10 that inaccurate history or unsound philosophy 
should be suffered to pass uncensured, merely 
because the offender chanced to be a lady. But 
we conceive that, on such occasions, a critic would 
do well to imitate the courteous knight who found 

15 himself compelled by duty to keep the lists against 
Bradamante. He, we are told, defended success- 
fully the cause of which he was the champion ; but 
before the fight began, exchanged Balisarda for a 

45 



46 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

less deadly sword, of which he carefully blunted 
the point and edge. 

Nor are the immunities of sex the only immu- 
nities which Miss Aikin may rightfully plead. 
Several of her works, and especially the very 5 
pleasing Memoirs of the Eeign of James the First, 
have fully entitled her to the privileges enjoyed by 
good writers. One of those privileges we hold to 
be this, that such writers, when, either from the 
unlucky choice of a subject, or from the indo- 10 
lence too often produced by success, they happen to 
fail, shall not be subjected to the severe discipline 
which it is sometimes necessary to inflict upon 
dunces and impostors, but shall merely be re- 
minded by a gentle touch, like that with which 15 
the Laputan flapper roused his dreaming lord, 
that it is high time to wake. 

Our readers will probably infer from what we 
have said that Miss Aikin's book has disappointed 
us. The truth is, that she is not well acquainted so 
with her subject. No person who is not familiar 
with the political and literary history of England 
during the reigns of William the Third, of Anne, 
and of George the First, can possibly write a good 
life of Addison. Now, we mean no reproach to 25 
Miss Aikin, and many will think that we pay her a 
compliment, when we say that her studies have 
taken a different direction. She is better acquainted 
with Shakespeare and Ealeigh, than with Con- 
greve and Prior ; and is far more at home among so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 47 

the rnfls and peaked beards of Theobald's than 
among the Steenkirks and flowing periwigs which 
surrounded Queen Anne's tea-table at Hampton. 
She seems to have written about the Elizabethan 

5 age, because she had read much about it; she 
seems, on the other hand, to have read a little 
about the age of Addison, because she had deter- 
mined to write about it. The consequence is that 
she has had to describe men and things without 

[0 having either a correct or a vivid idea of them, and 
that she has often fallen into errors of a very 
serious kind. The reputation which Miss Aikin 
has justly earned stands so high, and the charm of 
Addison's letters is so great, that a second edition 

15 of this work may probably be required. If so, we 
hope that every paragraph will be revised, and 
that every date and fact about which there can be 
the smallest doubt will be carefully verified. 

To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment 

20 as much like affection as any sentiment can be, 
which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a 
hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey. 
We trust, however, that this feeling will not betray 
us into that abject idolatry which we have often 

35 had occasion to reprehend in others, and which 
seldom fails to make both the idolater and the idol 
ridiculous. A man of genius and virtue is but a 
man. All his powers cannot be equally developed; 
nor can we expect from him perfect self-knowl- 

Bo edge. We need not, therefore, hesitate to admit 



48 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

<j that Addison has left us gotne compositions which 
do not rise above mediocrity, some heroic poems 
hardly equal to Parnell's, some criticism as super- 
ficial as Dr. Blair's, and a tragedy not very much 
better than Dr. Johnson's. It is praise enough to 
say of a writer that, in a high department of 
literature, in which many eminent writers have 
distinguished themselves, he has had no equal; 
and this may with strict justice be said of Addison. 
As a man, he may not have deserved the ado- 
ration which he received from those who, bewitched 
by his fascinating society, and indebted for all the 
comforts of life to his generous and delicate friend- 
ship, worshipped him nightly in his favorite temple 
at Button's. But, after full inquiry and impartial 15 
reflection, we have long been convinced that he 
deserved as much love and esteem as can be justly 
claimed by any of our infirm and erring race. 
Some blemishes may undoubtedly be detected in his 
character ; but the more carefully it is examined, 20 
the more it will appear, to use the phrase of the old 
anatomists, sound in the noble parts, free from all 
taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of ingrati- 
tude, of envy. Men may easily be named in whom 
some particular good disposition has been more 25 
conspicuous than in Addison. But the just har- 
mony of qualities, the exact temper between the 
stern and the humane virtues, the habitual ob- 
servance of every law, not only of moral rectitude, 
but of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him ao 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 49 

from all men who have been tried by equally 
strong temptations, and about whose conduct we 
possess equally full information. 

His father was the Keverend Lancelot Addison, 

5 who, though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, 
made some figure in the world, and occupies with 
credit two folio pages in the Biographia Britan- 
nica. Lancelot was sent up as a poor scholar from 
Westmoreland to Queen's College, Oxford, in the 

10 time of the Commonwealth ; made some progress 
in learning; became, like most of his fellow-stu- 
dents, a violent Eoyalist ; lampooned the heads of 
the university, and was forced to ask pardon on 
his bended knees. When he had left college he 

15 earned a humble subsistence by reading the liturgy 
of the fallen church to the families of those sturdy 
squires whose manor-houses were scattered over 
the Wild of Sussex. After the Eestoration his 
loyalty was rewarded with the post of chaplain to 

20 the garrison of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk was 
sold to France he lost his employment. But 
Tangier had been ceded by Portugal to England as 
part of the marriage portion of the Infanta Cathar- 
ine; and to Tangier Lancelot Addison was sent. 

25 A more miserable situation can hardly be con- 
ceived. It was difficult to say whether the unfortu- 
nate settlers were more tormented by the heats or 
by the rains, by the soldiers within the wall or by 
the Moors without it. One advantage the chaplain 

80 had. He enjoyed an excellent opportunity of 



50 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

studying the history and manners of Jews and 
Mahometans; and of this opportunity he appears 
to have made excellent use. On his return to 
England, after some years of banishment, he pub- 
lished an interesting volume on the Polity and 5 
Eeligion of Barbary, and another on the Hebrew 
Customs and the State of Eabbinical Learning, 
He rose to eminence in his profession, and became 
one of the royal chaplains, a Doctor of Divinity, 
Archdeacon of Salisbury, and Dean of Lichfield, lo 
It is said that he would have been made a bishop 
after the Eevolution if he had not given offence to 
the government by strenuously opposing, in the 
Convocation of 1689, the liberal policy of William 
and TiUotson. 15 

In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return 
from Tangier, his son Joseph was born. Of 
Joseph's childhood we know little. He learned 
his rudiments at schools in his father's neighbor- 
hood, and was then sent to the Charter House. 20 
The anecdotes which are popularly related about 
his boyish tricks do not harmonize very well with 
what we know of his riper years. There remains 
a tradition that he was the ringleader in a barring 
out, and another tradition that he ran away from 25 
school and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on 
berries and slept in a hollow tree, till after a long 
search he was discovered and brought home. If 
these stories be true, it would be curious to know 
by what moral discipline so mutinous and enter- so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON ol 

prising a lad was transformed into the gentlest and 
most modest of men. 

We have abundant proof that, whatever Joseph's 
pranks may have been, he pursued his studies 

5 vigorously and successfully. At fifteen he was 
not only fit for the university, but carried thither 
a classical taste and a stock of learning which 
would have done honor to a Master of Arts. He 
was entered at Queen's College, Oxford; but he 

10 had not been many months there when some of his 
Latin verses fell by accident into the hands of Dr. 
Lancaster, Dean of Magdalene College. The 
young scholar's diction and versification were 
already such as veteran professors might envy. 

15 Dr. Lancaster was desirous to serve a boy of such 
promise; nor was an opportunity long wanting. 
The Revolution had Just taken place ; and nowhere 
had it been hailed with more delight than at 
Magdalene College. That great and opulent cor- 

20 •" poration had been treated by James and by his 
chancellor with an insolence and injustice which, 
even in such a prince and in such a minister, may 
justly excite amazement, and which had done 
more than even the prosecution of the bishops to 

25 alienate the Church of England from the throne. 
A president, duly elected, had been violently ex- 
pelled from his dwelling: a Papist had been set 
over the society by a royal mandate: the Fellows, 
who, in conformity with their oaths, had refused 

80 to submit to this usurper, had been driven forth 



62 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

from their quiet cloisters and gardens, to die of 
want or to live on charity. But the day of redi^ess 
and retribution speedily came. The intruders were 
ejected : the venerable House was again inhabited 
by its old inmates : learning flourished under the 
rule of the wise and virtuous Hough; and with 
learning Avas united a mild and liberal spirit too 
often wanting in the princely colleges of Oxford. 
In consequence of the troubles through v/hich the 
society had passed, there had been no valid elec- 
tion of new members during the year 1688. In 
1689, therefore, there was twice the ordinary num- 
ber of vacancies; and thus Dr. Lancaster found 
it easy to procure for his young friend admittance 
to the advantages of a foundation then generally is 
esteemed the wealthiest in Europe. 

At Magdalene Addison resided during ten years. 
He was at first one of those scholars who are called 
Demies, but was subsequently elected a fellow. 
His college is still proud of his name ; his portrait 20 
still hangs in the hall ; and strangers are still told 
that his favorite walk was under the elms which 
fringe the meadow on the banks of the Cherwell. 
It is said, and is highly probable, that he was dis- 
tinguished among his fellow-students by the deli- 
cacy of his feelings, by the shyness of his manners, 
and by the assiduity with which he often prolonged 
his studies far into the night. It is certain that 
his reputation for ability and learning stood high. 
Many years later the ancient doctors of Magdalene 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 53 

continued to talk in their common room of his 
boyish compositions, and expressed their sorrow 
that no copy of exercises so remarkable had been 
preserved. It is proper, however, to remark that 

5 Miss Aikin has committed the error, very par- 
donable in a lady, of overrating Addison's classical 
attainments. In one department of learning, 
indeed, his proficiency was such as it is hardly pos- 
sible to overrate. His knowledge of the Latin 

10 poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to Clau- 
dian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and pro- 
found. He understood them thoroughly, entered 
into their spirit, and had the finest and most 
discriminating perception of all their peculiarities 

15 of style and melody ; nay, he copied their manner 
with admirable skill, and surpassed, we think, all 
their British imitators who had preceded him, 
Buchanan and Milton alone excepted. This is high 
praise; and beyond this we cannot with justice go. 

80 It is clear that Addison's serious attention during 
his residence at the university was almost entirely 
concentrated on Latin poetry, and that, if he did 
not wholly neglect other provinces of ancient 
literature, he vouchsafed to them only a cursory 

25 glance. He does not appear to have attained more .. 
than an ordinary acquaintance with the political.i 
and moral writers of Eome; nor was his own 
Latin prose by any means equal to his Latin verse. 
His knowledge of Greek, though doubtless such as 

so was in his time thought respectable at Oxford, was 



54 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

evidently less than that which many lads now carry 
away every year from Eton and Rugby. A mi- 
nute examination of his works, if we had time to 
make such an examination, would fully bear out 
these remarks. We will briefly advert to a few of 5 
the facts on which our judgment is grounded. 

Great praise is due to the Notes which Addison 
appended to his version of the second and thh^d 
books of the Metamorphoses. Yet those notes, 
while they show him to have been, in his own lo 
domain, an accomplished scholar, show also how 
confined that domain was. They are rich in 
apposite references to Virgil, Statins, and Clau- 
dian; but they contain not a single illustration 
drawn from the Greek poets. Now, if in the is 
whole compass of Latin literatm^e there be a pas- 
sage which stands in need of illustration drawn 
from the Greek poets, it is the story of Pentheus in 
the third book of the Metamorphoses. Ovid was 
indebted for that story to Euripides and Theoc- 20 
ritus, both of whom he has sometimes followed 
minutely. But neither to Euripides nor to Theoc- 
ritus does Addison make the faintest allusion ; and 
we, therefore, believe that we do not wrong him 
by supposing that he had little or no knowledge of 25 
their works. 

His travels in Italy, again, abound with classical 
quotations, happily introduced; but scarcely one 
of those quotations is in prose. He draws more 
illustrations from Ausonius and Manilius than from ao 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 55 

Cicero. Even his notions of the political and mili- 
tary affairs of the Eomans seem to be derived from 
poets and poetasters. Spots made memorable by 
events which have changed the destinies of the 

5 world, and which have been worthily recorded by 
great historians, bring to his mind only scraps of 
some ancient versifier. In the gorge of the Apen- 
nines he naturally remembers the hardships which 
Hannibal's army endured, and proceeds to cite, 

10 not the authentic narrative of Polybius, not the 
picturesque narrative of Livy, but the languid 
hexameters of Silius Italicus. On the banks of 
the Eubicon he never thinks of Plutarch's lively 

- description, or of the stern conciseness of the 

15 Commentaries, or of those letters to Atticus which 

BO forcibly express the alternations of hope and 

fear in a sensitive mind at a great crisis. His only 

authority for the events of the civil war is Lucan. 

All the best ancient works of art at Rome and 

20 Florence are Greek. Addison saw them, how- 
ever, without recalling one single verse of Pindar, 
of Oallimachus, or of the Attic dramatists; but 
they brought to his recollection innumerable pas- 
sages of Horace, Juvenal, Statins, and Ovid. 

25 The same may be said of the Treatise on 
Medals. In that pleasing work we find about 
three hundred passages extracted with great judg- 
ment from the Roman poets ; but we do not recol- 
lect a single passage taken from any Roman orator 

80 or historian ; and we are confident that not a line 



56 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

is quoted from any Greek, writer. No person, who 
had derived all his information on the subject of 
medals from Addison, would suspect that the 
Greek coins were in historical interest equal, and 
in beauty of execution far superior, to those of 5 
Eome. 

If it were necessary to find any further proof 
that Addison's classical knowledge was confined 
within narrow limits, that proof would be fur- 
nished by his Essay on the Evidences of Christi- lo 
anity. The Eoman poets throw little or no light 
on the literary and historical questions which he is 
under the necessity of examining in that essay. 
He is, therefore, left completely in the dark; and 
it is melancholy to see how helplessly he gropes his is 
way from blunder to blunder. He assigns, as 
grounds for his religious belief, stories as absurd as 
that of the Cock-Lane ghost, and forgeries as rank 
as Ireland's Vortigern ; puts faith in the lie about 
the Thundering Legion; is convinced that Tiber- 20 
ius moved the senate to admit Jesus among the 
gods ; and pronounces the letter of Agbarus, King 
of Edessa, to be a record of great authority. Nor 
were these errors the effects of superstition ; for to 
superstition Addison was by no means prone. The 25 
truth is, that he was writing about what he did not 
understand. 

Miss Aikin has discovered a letter from which it 
appears that, while Addison resided at Oxford, he 
was one of several writers whom the booksellers 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 57 

engaged to make an English version of Herodotus ; 
and she infers that he must have been a good 
Greek scholar. We can allow very little weight to 
this argument, when we consider that his fellow- 

5 laborers were to have been Boyle and Blackmore. 
Boyle is remembered chiefly as the nominal author 
of the worst book on Greek history and philology 
that ever was printed; and this book, bad as it is, 
Boyle was unable to produce without help. Of 

10 Blackmore 's attainments in the ancient tongues, 
it may be sufficient to say that, in his prose, he has 
confounded an aphori^ with an apophthegm, and 
that when, in his verse, he treats of classical sub- 
jects, his habit is to regale his readers with four 

15 false quantities to a page. 

It is probable that the classical acquirements of 
Addison were of as much service to him as if they 
had been more extensive. The world generally 
gives its admiration, not to the man who does 

20 what nobody else even attempts to do, but to the 
man who does best whab multitudes do well. 
Bentley was so immeasurably superior to all the 
other scholars of his time that few among them 
could discover his superiority. But the accom- 

25 plishment in which Addison excelled his contem- 
poraries was then, as it is now, highly valued and 
assiduously cultivated at all English seats of learn- 
ing. Everybody who had been at a public school 
had written Latin verses ; many had written such 

80 verses with tolerable success, and were quite able 



58 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

to ^-ppreciate, though by no means able to rival, 
the skill with which Addison imitated Virgil. His 
lines on the Barometer and the Bowling Green 
were applauded by hundreds, to whom the Disser- 
tation on the Epistles of Phalaris was as unintel- 
. ligible as the hieroglyphics on an obelisk. 

Purity of style, and an easy flow of numbers, 
are common to all Addison's Latin poems. Our 
favorite piece is the Battle of the Cranes and 
Pygmies ; for in that piece we discern a gleam of i 
the fancy and humor which many years later 
enlivened thousands of breakfast -tables. Swift 
boasted that he was never known to steal a hint ; 
and he certainly owed as little to his predecessors 
as any modern writer. Yet we cannot help sus- 
pecting that he borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, 
one of the happiest touches in his Voyage of Lilli- 
put from Addison's verses. Let our readers judge. 

''The Emperor," says Gulliver, ''is taller by 
about the breadth of my nail than any of his 
court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into 
the beholders." 

About thirty years before Gulliver's Travels 
o appeared, Addison wrote these lines : — 

*'Jamque acies inter medias sese arduus infert 
Pygmeadiun ductor, qui, majestate verendus, 
Incessuque gravis, reliquos supereminet omnes 
Mole gigantea, mediamque exsurgit in ulnam." 

The Latin poems of Addison were greatly and 
"^^ justly admired both at Oxford and Cambridge, i 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 59 

before his name had ever been heard by the wits 
who thronged the coffee-houses round Drury-Lane 
Theatre. In his twenty-second year he ventured 
to appear before the public as a writer of English 
5 verse. He addressed some complimentary lines to 
Dryden, who, after many triumphs and many 
reverses, had at length reached a secure and lonely 
eminence among the literary men of that age. 
Dryden appears to have been much gratified by the 

10 young scholar's praise; and an interchange of 
civilities and good offices followed. Addison was 
probably introduced by Dryden to Congreve, and 
was certainly presented by Oongreve to Charles 
Montague, who was then Chancellor of the 

15 Exchequer, and leader of the Whig party in the 
House of Commons. 

^'' At this time Addison seemed inclined to devote 
himself to poetry. He published a translation of 
part of the fourth Georgic, Lines to King 

20 William, and other performances of equal value ; 
that is to say, of no value at all. But in those 
days, the public was in the habit of receiving with 
applause pieces which would now have little chance 
of obtaining the ISTewdigate prize or the Seatonian 

25 prize. And the reason is obvious. The heroic 
couplet was then the favorite measure. The art 
of arranging words in that measure, so that the 
lines may flow smoothly, that the accents may fall 
correctly, that the rhymes may strike the ear 

30 strongly, and that there may be a pause at the end 



60 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

of every distich, is an art as mechanical as that of 
mending a kettle or shoeing a horse, and may be 
learned by any human being who has sense enough 
to learn anything. But, like other mechanical 
arts, it was gradually improved by means of many 5 
experiments and many failures. It was reserved 
for Pope to discover the trick, to make himself 
complete master of it, and to teach it to everybody 
else. From the time when his Pastorals appeared, 
heroic versification became matter of rule and com- 10 
pass ; and, before long, all artists were on a level. 
Hundreds of dunces who never blundered on one 
happy thought or expression were able to write 
reams of couplets which, as far as euphony was 
concerned, could not be distinguished from those 15 
of Pope himself, and which very clever writers of 
the reign of Charles the Second, — Kochester, for 
example, or Marvel, or Oldham, — ^would have con- 
templated with admiring despair. 

Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very 20 
small man. But Hoole, coming after Pope, had 
learned how to manufacture decasyllabic verses, 
and poured them forth by thousands and tens of 
thousands, all as well turned, as smooth, and as 
like each other as the blocks which have passed 25 
through Mr. Brunei's mill in the dockyard at 
Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble 
blocks rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand 
with a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his 
translation of a celebrated passage in the -^neid : — 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 61 

"This child our parent earth, stirred up with spite 
Of all the gods, brought forth, and, as some write, 
She was last sister of that giant race 
That sought to scale Jove's court, right swift of pace, 
5 And swifter far of wing, a monster vast 

And dreadful. Look, how many plumes are placed 
On her huge corpse, so many waking eyes 
Stick underneath, and, which may stranger rise 
In the report, as many tongues she wears." 

10'*^ ^Compare with these jagged misshapen distichs 
the neat fabric which Hoole's machine produces in 
unlimited abundance/ We take the first lines on 
which we open in his version of Tasso. They are 
neither better nor worse than the rest : — 

16 *'0 thou, whoe'er thou art, whose steps are led, 

By choice or fate, these lonely shores to tread, 
No greater wonders east or west can boast 
Than yon small island on the pleasing coast. 
If e'er thy sight would blissful scenes explore, 

20 , The current pass, and seek the further shore." 

Ever since the time of Pope there has been a 
glut of lines of this sort ; and we are now as little 
disposed to admire a man for being able to write 
them, as for being able to write his name. But in 

25 the days of William ^the Third such versification 
was rare; and a rhymer who ;^had any skill in it 
passed for a great poet, just as in the dark ages a 
person who could write his name passed for a great 
clerk. Accordingly, Duke, Stepney, Granville, 

so Walsh, and others whose only title to fame was 



62 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

that they said in tolerable metre what might have 
been as well said in prose, or what was nofc worth 
saying at all, were honored with marks of distinc- 
tion which ought to be reserved for genius. With 
these Addison must have ranked, if he had not 5 
earned true and lasting glory by performances 
which very little resembled his juvenile poems. 

tC ^ Dry den was now busied with Virgil, and ob- 
tained from Addison a critical preface to the 
Georgics. In return for this service, and for 10 
other services of the same kind, the veteran poet, 
in the postscript to the translation of the .^neid, 
complimented his young friend with great liber- 
ality, and indeed with more liberality than sin- 
cerity. He affected to be afraid that his own 15 
performance would not sustain a comparison with 
the version of the fourth Georgic, by *'the most 
ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford." ''After his 
bees," added Dryden, ''my latter swarm is scarcely 
worth the hiving." 20 

n'^i The time had now arrived when it was necessary 
for Addison to choose a calling. Everything 
seemed to point his course towards the clerical pro- 
fession. His habits were regular, his opinions 
orthodox. His college had large ecclesiastical 25 
preferment in its gift, and boasts that it has given 
at least one bishop to almost every see in England. 
Dr. Lancelot Addison held an honorable place in 
the church, and had set his heart on seeing his 
son a clergyman. It is clear, from some expressions so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 63 

in the young man's rhymes, that his intention was 
to take orders. But Charles Montague interfered. 
Montague had first brought himself into notice by 
verses, well-timed and not contemptibly written, 

5 but never, we think, rising above mediocrity. 
Fortunately for himself and for his country, he 
early quitted poetry, in which he could never have 
attained a rank as high as that of Dorset or Eoch- 
ester, and turned his mind to oflBcial and par- 

10 liamentary business. It is written that the 
ingenious person who undertook to instruct 
Easselas, prince of Abyssinia, in the art of flying, 
ascended an eminence, waved his wings, sprang 
into the air, and instantly dropped into the lake. 

15 But it is added that the wings, which were unable 
to support him through the sky, bore him up 
effectually as soon as he was in the water. This 
is no bad type of the fate of Charles Montague, 
and of men like him. When he attempted to soar 

20 into the regions of poetical invention, he alto- 
gether failed; but, as soon as he had descended 
from that ethereal elevation into a lower and 
grosser element, his talents instantly raised him 
above the mass. He became a distinguished finan- 

25 cier, debater, courtier, and party leader. He still 
retained his fondness for the pursuits of his early 
days ; but he showed that fondness not by wearying 
the public with his own feeble performances, but 
by discovering and encouraging literary excellence 

80 in others. A crowd of wits and poets, who would 



64 MACAULAY^S ESSAYS 

easily have vanquished him as a competitor, 
revered him as a judge and a patron. In his plans 
for the encouragement of learning, he was cor- 
dially supported by the ablest and most virtuous 
of his colleagues, the Lord Chancellor Somers. 
Though both these great statesmen had a sincere 
love of letters, it was not solely from a love of 
letters that they were desirous to enlist youths of 
high intellectual qualifications in the public serv- 
ice. The Eevolution had altered the whole sys- lo 
tem of government. Before that event the press 
had been controlled by censors, and the parliament 
had sat only two months in eight years. Now the 
press was free, and had begun to exercise unprece- 
dented influence on the public mind. Parliament 16 
met annually, and sat long. The chief power in 
the state had passed to the House of Commons* 
At such a conjuncture, it was natural that literary 
and oratorical talents should rise in value. There 
was danger that a government which neglected so 
such talents might be subverted by them. It was, 
therefore, a profound and enlightened policy which 
led Montague and Somers to attach such talents to 
the Whig party, by the strongest ties both of inter- 
est and of gratitude. 

"t^ It is remarkable that, in a neighboring country, 
we have recently seen similar effects follow from 
similar causes. The Revolution of July 1830 
established representative government in France. 
The men of letters instantly rose to the highest im- sc 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 65 

portance in the state. At the present moment 
most of the persons whom we see at the head both 
of the Administration and of the Opposition, have 
been professors, historians, journalists, poets. The 

5 influence of the literary class in England, during 
the generation which followed the Eevolution, was 
great, but-by no meafis so great as it has lately 
been in France. For, in England, the aristocracy 
of intellect had to contend with a powerful and 

10 deeply rooted aristocracy of a very different kind. 
France had no Somersets and Shrewsburies to keep 
down her Addisons and Priors. 

<x^^ . It was in the year 1699, when Addison had just 
completed his twenty -seventh year, that the course 

15 of his life was finally determined. Both the great 
chiefs of the Ministry were kindly disposed 
towards him. In political opinions he already 
was, what he continued to be through life, a firm, 
though a moderate Whig. He had addressed the 

20 most polished and vigorous of his early English 
lines to Somers, and had dedicated to Montague a 
Latin poem, truly Virgilian, both in style and 
rhythm, on the peace of Kyswick. The wish of 
the young poet's great friends was, it should seem, 

25 to employ him in the service of the crown abroad. 
But an intimate knowledge of the French language 
was a qualification indispensable to a diplomatist ; 
and this qualification Addison had not acquired. 
It was, therefore, thought desirable that he should 

so pass some time on the Continent in preparing him- 



66 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

self for official employment. His own means were 
not such as would enable him to travel ; but a pen- 
sion of three hundred pounds a year was procured 
for him by the interest of the Lord Chancellor. 
It seems to have been apprehended that some diffi- 
culty might be started by the rulers of Magdalene 
College. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
wrote in the strongest terms to Hough. The state 
— such was the purport of Montague's letter — 
could not, at that time, spare to the church such 
a man as Addison. Too many high civil posts 
were already occupied by adventurers, who, desti- 
tute of every liberal art and sentiment, at once 
pillaged and disgraced the country which they pre- 
tended to serve. It had become necessary t« 
recruit for the public service from a very different 
class, from that class of which Addison was the 
representative. The close of the Minister's letter 
was remarkable. ^'I am called," he said, "an 
enemy of the church. But I will never do it any 
other injury than keeping Mr. Addison out of it." 
'^x^ This interference was successful; and, in the 
summer of 1699, Addison, made a rich man by his 
pension, and still retaining his fellowship, quitted 
his beloved Oxford, and set out on his travels. He 
crossed from Dover to Calais, proceeded to Paris, 
and was received there with great kindness and 
politeness by a kinsman of his friend Montague, 
Charles Earl of Manchester, who had just been 
appointed Ambassador to the Court of France. 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 67 

The countess, a Whig and a toast, was probably as 
gracious as her lord ; for Addison long retained an 
agreeable recollection of the impression which she 
at this time made on him, and, in some lively 

5 lines written on the glasses of the Kit Cat Club, 

described the enyy which her cheeks, glowing with 

the genuine bloom of England, had excited among 

the painted beauties of Versailles. 

*^\ Louis the Fourteenth was at this time expiating 

10 the vices of his youth by a devotion which had no 
root in reason, and bore no fruit of charity. The 
servile literature of France had changed its charac- 
ter to suit the changed character of the prince. 
No book appeared that had not an air of sanctity. 

15 Racine, who was just dead, had passed the close of 
his life in writing sacred dramas ; and Dacier was 
seeking for the Athanasian mysteries in Plato. 
Addison described this state of things in a short 
but lively and graceful letter to Montague. 

20 Another letter, written about the same time to the 
Lord Chancellor, conveyed the strongest assurances 
of gratitude and attachment. ''The only return I 
can make to your Lordship," said Addison, "will 
be to apply myself entirely to my business." 

25 With this view he quitted Paris and repaired to 
Blois, a place where it was supposed that the 
French language was spoken in its highest purity, 
and where not a single Englishman could be 
found. Here he passed some months pleasantly 

30 and profitably. Of his way of life at Blois, one of 



68 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

his associates, an abbe named Philippeans, gave an 
account to Joseph Spence. If this account is to 
be trusted, Addison studied much, mused much, 
talked little, had fits of absence, and either had no 
love affairs, or was too discreet to confide them to 5 
the abbe. A man who, even when surrounded by 
fellow-countrymen and fellow -students, had always 
been remarkably shy and silent, was not likely to 
be loquacious in a foreign tongue, and among for- 
eign companions. But it is clear from Addison's lo 
letters, some of which were long after published in 
the Guardian^ that, while he appeared to be ab- 
sorbed in his own meditations, he was really 
observing French society with that keen and sly, 
yet not ill-natured side-glance, which was pecul- is 
iarly his own. 
f^v - From Blois he returned to Paris; and, having 
now mastered the French language, found great 
pleasure in the society of French philosophers and 
poets. He gave an account in a letter to Bishop 20 
Hough, of two highly interesting conversations, 
one with Malebranche, the other with Boileau. 
Malebranche expressed great partiality for the Eng- 
lish, and extolled the genius of Newton, but shook 
his head when Hobbes was mentioned, and was 35 
indeed so unjust as to call the author of the 
Leviathan a poor silly creature. Addison's mod- 
esty restrained him from fully relating, in his 
letter, the circumstances of his introduction to 
Boileau. Boileau, having survived the friends 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 69 

and rivals of his youth, old, deaf, and melancholy, 
lived in retirement, seldom went either to Com-t or 
to Jthe Academy, and was almost inaccessible to 
strangers. Of the English and of English liter- 

5 ature he knew nothing. He had hardly heard the 
name of Dryden. Some of our countrymen, in the 
warmth of their patriotism, have asserted that this 
ignorance must have been affected. We own that 
we see no ground for such a supposition. English 

10 literature was to the French of the age of Louis 
the Fourteenth what German literature was to our 
own grandfathers. Very few, we suspect, of the ac- 
complished men who, sixty or seventy years ago, 
used to dine in Leicester Square with Sir Joshua, 

15 or at Streatham with Mrs. Thrale, had the slight- 
est notion that Wieland was one of the first wits 
and poets, and Lessing, beyond all dispute, the 
first critic in Europe. Boileau knew just as little 
about the Paradise Lost and about Absalom and 

20 Achitophel; but he had read Addison's Latin 
poems, and admired them greatly. They had 
given him, he said, quite a new notion of the state 
of learning and taste among the English. John- 
son will have it that these praises were insincere. 

25 ''Nothing," says he, ''is better known of Boileau 
than that he had an injudicious and peevish con- 
tempt of modern Latin; and therefore his profes- 
sion of regard was probably the effect of his civility 
rather than approbation." Now, nothing is better 

80 known of Boileau than that he was singularly 



70 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

sparing of compliments. We do not remember 
that either friendship or fear ever induced him to 
bestow praise on any composition which he did not 
approve. On literary questions, his caustic, dis- 
dainful, and self-confident spirit rebelled against s 
that authority to which everything else in France 
bowed down. He had the spirit to tell Louis the 
Fourteenth firmly and even rudely, that his maj- 
esty knew nothing about poetry, and admired 
verses which were detestable. What was there in lo 
Addison's position that could induce the satirist, 
whose stern and fastidious temper had been the 
dread of two generations, to turn sycophant for the 
first and last time? Nor was Boileau's contempt 
of modern Latin either injudicious or peevish. 15 
He thought, indeed, that no poem of the first 
order would ever be written in a dead language. 
And did he think amiss? Has not the experience 
of centuries confirmed his opinion? Boileau also 
thought it probable that, in the best modern 20 
Latin, a writer of the Augustan age would have 
detected ludicrous improprieties. And who can 
think otherwise? What modern scholar can 
honestly declare that he sees the smallest impurity 
in the style of Livy? Yet is it not certain that, 25 
in the style of Livy, PoUio, whose taste had been 
formed on the ^banks of the Tiber, detected the 
inelegant idiom of the Po? Has any modern 
scholar understood Latin better than Frederic the 
Great understood French? Yet is it not notorious so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 71 

that Frederic the Great, after reading, speaking, 
writing French, and nothing but French, during 
more than half a century, after unlearning his 
mother tongue in order to learn French, after liv- 

5 ing familiarly during many years with French 
associates, could not, to the last, compose in 
French, without imminent risk of committing 
some mistake which would have moved a smile in 
the literary circles of Paris? Do we believe that 

10 Erasmus and Fracastorius wrote Latin as well as 
Dr. Eobertson and Sir Walter Scott wrote Eng- 
lish? And are there not in the Dissertation on In- 
dia, the last of Dr. Kobertson's works, in Waverley, 
in Marmion, Scotticisms at which a London 

15 apprentice would laugh? But does it follow, 
because we think thus, that we can find nothing to 
admire in the noble alcaics of Gray, or in the play- 
ful elegiacs of Vincent Bourne? Surely not. Nor 
was Boileau so ignorant or tasteless as to be incapa- 

20 ble of appreciating good modern Latin. In the 
very letter to which Johnson alludes, Boileau says, 
'^ISTe croyez pas pourtant que je veuille par la 
blamer les vers Latins que vous m'avez envoy es 
d'un de vos illustres academiciens. Je les ai 

25 trouves fort beaux, et dignes de Vida et de San- 
nazar, mais non pas d'Horace et de Virgile. " 
Several poems in modern Latin have been praised 
by Boileau quite as liberally as it was his habit to 
praise anything. He says, for example, of the 

30 Pere Fraguier's epigrams, that Catullus seems to 



72 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

have come to life again. But the best proof that 
Boileau did not feel the iindiscerning contempt for 
modern Latin verses which has been imputed to 
him, is that he wrote and published Latin verses 
in several metres. Indeed, it happens, curiously 5 
enough, that the most severe censure ever pro- 
nounced by him on iflodern Latin is conveyed in 
Latin hexameters. We allude to the fragment 
which begins : — 

*^Quid numeris iterum me balbutire Latinis, 10 

Longe Alpes citra natum de patre Sicambro, 
Musa, jubes?" 

For these reasons we feel assured that the praise 
which Boileau bestowed on the Macliinm Gesticul- 
antes^ and the Gerano-PygmcBomacMa^ was is 
sincere. He certainly opened himself to Addison 
with a freedom which was a sure indication of 
esteem. Literature was the chief subject of con- 
versation. The old man talked on his favorite 
theme much and well, — indeed, as his young 20 
hearer thought, incomparably well. Boileau had 
undoubtedly some of the qualities of a great critic. 
He wanted imagination ; but he had strong sense. 
His literary code was formed on narrow principles ; 
but in applying it he showed great judgment and 25 
penetration. In mere style, abstracted from the 
ideas of which style is the garb, his taste was 
excellent. He was well acquainted with the great 
Greek writers, and, though unable fully to appreci- 
ate their creative genius, admired the majestic 3a 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 73 

simplicity of their manner, and had learned from 
them to despise bombast and tinsel. It is easy, we 
think, to discover in the Spectator and the Guard- 
ian traces of the influence, in part salutary and 

5 in part pernicious, which the mind of Boileau had 
on the mind of Addison. 

^ ^ While Addison was at Paris, an event took 
place which made that capital a disagreeable 
residence for an Englishman and a Whig. 

10 Charles, second of the name. King of Spain, died, 
and bequeathed his dominions to Philip, Duke of 
Anjou, a younger son of the Dauphin. The King 
of France, in direct violation of his engagements, 
both with Great Britain and with the States 

15 General, accepted the bequest on behalf of his 
grandson. The house of Bourbon was at the sum- 
mit of human grandeur. England had been out- 
witted, and found herself in a situation at once 
degrading and perilous. The people of France, 

20 not presaging the calamities by which they were 
destined to expiate the perfidy of their sovereign, 
went mad with pride and delight. Every man 
looked as if a gi-eat estate had just been left him. 
''The French conversation," said Addison, ''begins 

25 to grow insupportable ; that which was before the 
vainest nation in the world, is now worse than 
ever." Sick of the arrogant exultation of the 
Parisians, and probably foreseeing that the peace 
between France and England could not be of long 

30 duration, he set off for Italy. 



74 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

^^ In December, 1700, he embarked at Marseilles. 
As he glided along the Ligurian coast, he was 
delighted by the sight of myrtles and olive-trees, 
which retained their verdure under the winter 
solstice. Soon, however, he encountered one of 5 
the black storms of the Mediterranean. The 
captain of the ship gave up all for lost, and con- 
fessed himself ^to a capuchin who happened to be 
on board. The English heretic, in the meantime, 
fortified himself against the terrors of death with lo 
devotions of a very different kind. How strong an 
impression this perilous voyage made on him 
appears from the ode, "How are thy servants 
blest, Lord!" which was long after published in 
the Spectator, After some days of discomfort and i3 
danger, Addison was glad to land at Savona, and 
to make his way, over mountains where no road 
had yet been hewn out by art, to the city of 
Genoa. 
<V U « At Genoa, still ruled by her own doge, and by 20 
the nobles whose names were inscribed on her 
Book of Gold, Addison made a short stay. He 
^^ admired the narrow streets overhung by long lines 
■ of towering palaces, the walls rich with frescoes, 
the gorgeous temple of the Annunciation, and the 25 
tapestries whereon were recorded the long glories 
of the house of Doria. Thence he hastened to 
Milan, where he contemplated the Gothic magnifi- 
cence of the cathedral with more wonder than 
pleasure. He passed Lake Benacus while a gale so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 75 

was blowing, and saw the waves raging as they 
raged when Virgil looked upon them. At Venice, 
then the gayest spot in Europe, the traveller spent 
the Carnival, the gayest season of the year, in the 
5 midst of masks, dances, and serenades. Here he 
was at once diverted and provoked by the absurd 
dramatic pieces which then disgraced the Italian 
stage. To one of those pieces, however, he was 
indebted for a valuable hint. He was present 

10 when a ridiculous play on the death of Cato was 
performed. Cato, it seems, was in love with a 
daughter of Scipio. The lady had given her heart 
to Cassar. The rejected lover determined to de- 
stroy himself. He appeared seated in his library, a 

15 dagger in his hand, a Plutarch and a Tasso before 
him; and, in this position, he pronounced a 
soliloquy before he struck the blow. We are sur- 
prised that so remarkable a circumstance as this 
should have escaped the notice of all Addison's 

20 biographers. There cannot, we conceive, be the 
smallest doubt that this scene, in spite of its ab- 
surdities and anachronisms, struck the traveller's 
imagination, and suggested to him the thought of 
bringing Cato on the English stage. It is well 

25 known that about this time he began his tragedy, 
and that he finished the first four acts before he 
returned to England. 

^T * On his way from Venice to Rome, he was drawn 
some miles out of the beaten road by a wish to see 

so the smallest independent state in Europe. On a 



76 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

rock where the snow still lay, though the Italian 
spring was now far advanced, was perched the 
little fortress of San Marino. The roads which 
led to the secluded town were so bad that few 
travellers had ever visited it, and none had ever 5 
published an account of it. Addison could not 
suppress a good-natured smile at the simple man- 
ners and institutions of this singular community. 
But he observed, with the exultation of a Whig, 
that the rude mountain tract which formed the lo 
territory of the republic swarmed with an honest, 
healthy, and contented peasantry, while the rich 
plain which surrounded the metropolis of civil and 
spiritual tyranny was scarcely less desolate than 
the uncleared wilds of America. is 

"^ At Eome Addison remained on his first visit only 
long enough to catch a glimpse of^St. Peter's and 
of the Pantheon. His haste is the more extra- 
ordinary because the Holy Week was close at hand. 
He has given no hint which can enable us to pro- 20 
nounce why he chose to fly from a spectacle which 
every year allures from distant regions persons of 
far less taste and sensibility than his. Possibly, 
travelling, as he did, at the charge of a government 
distinguished by its enmity to the Church of 25 
Eome, he may have thought that it would be im- 
prudent in him to assist at the most magnificent 
rite of that church. Many eyes would be upon 
him, and he might find it difficult to behave in 
such a manner as to give offence neither to his 3d 



LIFE AND WKITINGS OF ADDISON 77 

patrons in England, nor to those among whom he 
resided. Whatever his motives may have been, he 
turned his back on the most august and affecting 
ceremony which is known among men, and posted 

5 along the Appian way to Naples. 

<r/\ . Naples was then destitute of what are now, per- 
haps, its chief attractions. The lovely bay and the 
awful mountain were indeed there; but a farm- 
house stood on the theatre of Herculaneum, and 

10 rows of vines grew over the streets of Pompeii. 
The temples of Paestum had not indeed been hid- 
den from the eye of man by any great convulsion 
of nature; but, strange to say, their existence was 
a secret even to artists and antiquaries. Though 

15 situated within a few hours' journey of a great 
capital, where Salvator had not long before 
painted, and where Vico was then lecturing, those 
noble remains were as little known to Europe as 
the ruined cities overgrown by the forests of Yuca- 

20 tan. What was to be seen at Naples Addison saw. 
He climbed Vesuvius, explored the tunnel of 
Posilipo, and wandered among the vines and 
almond-trees of Capreae. But neither the wonders 
of nature, nor those of art, could so occupy his 

25 attention as to prevent him from noticing, though 
cursorily, the abuses of the government and the 
misery of the people. The great kingdom which 
had just descended to Philip the Fifth, was in a 
state of paralytic dotage. Even Castile and Ara- 

30 gon were sunk in wretchedness. Yet, compared 



78 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

with the Italian dependencies of the Spanish 
crown, Castile and Aragon might be called pros- 
perous. It is clear that all the observations which 
Addison made in Italy tended to confirm him in 
the political opinions which he had adopted at 5 
home. To the last he always spoke of foreign 
travel as the best cnre for Jacobitism. In his 
Freeholder the Tory fox-hnnter asks what travel- 
ling is good for, except to teach a man to jabber 
French and to talk against passive obedience. lo 

\y\ - From Naples, Addison returned to Eome by sea, 
along the coast which his favorite Virgil had cele- 
brated. The felucca passed the headland where 
the oar and trumpet were placed by the Trojan 
adventurers on the tomb of Misenus, and anchored 15 
at night under the shelter of the fabled promontory 
of Circe. The voyage ended in the Tiber, still 
overhung with dark verdure, and still turbid with 
yellow sand, as when it met the eyes of ^Eneas. 
From the ruined port of Ostia, the stranger hur- 20 
ried to Eome ; and at Eome he remained during 
those hot and sickly montlis, when, even in the 
Augustan age, all who could make their escape fled 
from mad dogs and from streets black with funer- 
als, to gather the first figs of the season in the 25 
country. It is probable that, when he, long after, 
poured forth in verse his gratitude to the Provi- 
dence which had enabled him to breathe unhurt 
in tainted air, he was thinking of the August and 
September which he passed at Rome. ae 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 79 

It was not till the latter end of October that he 
tore himself away from the masterpieces of ancient 
and modern art which are collected in the city so 
long the mistress of the world. He then journeyed 

5 northward, passed through Sienna, and for a 
moment forgot his prejudices in favor of classic 
architecture as he looked on the magnificent 
cathedral. At Florence he spent some days with 
the Duke of Shrewsbury, who, cloyed with the 

10 pleasures of ambition, and impatient of its pains, 
fearing both parties, and loving neither, had deter- 
mined to hide in an Italian retreat talents and 
accomplishments which, if they had been united 
with fixed principles and civil courage, might have 

15 made him the foremost man of his age. These 
days, we are told, passed pleasantly; and we can 
easily believe it. For Addison was a delightful 
companion when he was at his ease ; and the duke, 
though he seldom forgot that he was a Talbot, had 

20 the invaluable art of putting at ease all who came 
\ near him. 

u *i Addison gave some time to Florence, and espe- 
cially to the sculptures in the Museum, which he 
preferred even to those of the Vatican. He then 

25 pursued his journey through a country in which 
the ravages of the last war were still discernible, 
and in which all men were looking forward with 
dread to a still fiercer conflict. Eugene had 
already descended from the Khaetian Alps, to dis- 

30 pute with Oatinat the rich plain of Lombardy. 



80 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

The faithless ruler of Savoy was still reckoned 
among the allies of Louis. England had not yet 
actually declared war against France: but Man- 
chester had left Paris ; and the negotiations which 
produced the Grand Alliance against the house of 5 
Bourbon were in progress. Under such circum- 
stances, it was desirable for an English traveller to 
reach neutral ground without delay. Addison 
resolved to cross Mont Cenis. It was December; 
and the road was very different from that which lo 
now reminds the stranger of the power and genius 
of Napoleon. The winter, however, was mild; 
and the passage was, for those times, easy. To 
this journey Addison alluded when, in the ode 
which we have already quoted, he said that for 15 
him the Divine goodness had warmed the hoary 
Alpine hills. 
\X It was in the midst of the eternal snow that he 
composed his Epistle to his friend Montague, now 
Lord Halifax. That Epistle, once widely re- 20 
nowned, is now known only to curious readers, and 
will hardly be considered by those to whom it is 
known as in any perceptible degree heightening 
Addison's fame. It is, however, decidedly superior 
to any English composition which be had previously 25 
published. Nay, we think it quite as good as any 
poem in heroic metre which appeared during the 
interval between the death of Dryden and the 
publication of the Essay on Criticism. It con- 
tains passages as good as the second-rate passages so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 81 

of Pope, and would have added to the reputation 
of Parnell or Prior. 
' ' ""^ But, whatever be the literary merits or defects of 
the Epistle, it undoubtedly does honor to the prin- 

5 ciples and spirit of the author. Halifax had now 
nothing to give. He had fallen from power, had 
been held up to obloquy, had been impeached by 
the House of Commons, and, though his peers had 
dismissed the impeachment, had, as it seemed, 

10 little chance of ever again filling high office. The 
Epistle, written at such a time, is one among many 
proofs that there was no mixture of cowardice or 
meanness in the suavity and moderation which dis- 
tinguished Addison from all the other public men 

15 of those stormy times. 

At Geneva, the traveller learned that a partial 
change of ministry had taken place in England, and 
that the Earl of Manchester had become Secretary of 
State. Manchester exerted himself to serve his 

20 young friend. It was thought advisable that an 
English agent should be near the person of Eugene 
in Italy; and Addison, whose diplomatic education 
was now finished, was the man selected. He was 
preparing to enter on his honorable functions, 

25 when all his prospects were for a time darkened by 

the death of William the Third. 

"ify Anne had long felt a strong aversion, personal, 

political, and religious, to the Whig party. That 

aversion appeared in the first measures of her 

80 reign. Manchester was deprived of the seals. 



82 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

after he had held them only a few weeks. Neither 
Somers nor Halifax was sworn of the Privy Coun- 
cil. Addison shared the fate of his three patrons. 
His hopes of employment in the public service 
were at an end ; his pension was stopped ; and it b 
was necessary for him to support himself by his 
own exertions. He became tutor to a young Eng- 
lish traveller, and appears to have rambled with 
h,is pupil over great part of Switzerland and Ger- 
many. At this time he wrote his pleasing treatise lo 
on Medals. It was not published till after his 
death ; but several distinguished scholars saw the 
manuscript, and gave just praise to the grace of the 
style, and to the learning and ingenuity evinced by 
the quotations. is 

^\il • From Germany, Addison repaired to Holland, 
where he learned the melancholy news of his 
father's death. After passing some months in the 
United Provinces, he returned about the close of 
the year 1703 to England. He was there cordially 20 
received by his friends, and introduced by them 
into the Kit Cat Club, a society in which were col- 
lected all the various talents and accomplishments 
which then gave lustre to the Whig party. 

>^^c^ . Addison was, during some months after his 25 
returnfrom the Continent, hard pressed by pecun- 
iary difficulties. But it was soon in the power of 
his noble patrons to serve him effectually. A 
political change, silent and gradual, but of the 
highest importance, was in daily progress. The so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 83 

accession of Anne had been hailed by the Tories 
with transports of joy and hope; and for a time it 
seemed that the Whigs had fallen never to rise 
again. The throne was surrounded by men sup- 

5 posed to be attached to the prerogative and to the 

church; and among these none stood so high in 

the favor of the sovereign as the Lord-Treasurer 

Godolphin and the Captain-General Marlborough. 

The country gentlemen and country clergymen 

10 had fully expected that the policy of these min- 
isters would be directly opposed to that which had 
been almost constantly followed by William ; that 
the landed interest would be favored at the expense 
of trade ; that no additions would be made to the 

15 funded debt; that the privileges conceded to 
Dissenters by the late king would be curtailed, if 
not withdrawn; that the war with France, if there 
must be such a war, would, on our part, be almost 
entirely naval; and that the government would 

20 avoid close connections with foreign powers, and, 
above all, with Holland. 

vi*^ But the country gentlemen and country clergy- 
men were fated to be deceived, not for the last 
time. The prejudices and passions which raged 

25 without control in vicarages, in cathedral closes, 
and in the manor-houses of fox-hunting squires, 
were not shared by the chiefs of the ministry. 
Those statesmen saw that it was both for the pub- 
lic interest, and for their own interest, to adopt a 

30 Whig policy, at least as respected the alliances of 



84 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

the country and the conduct of the war. But, if 
the foreign policy of the Whigs were adopted, it 
was impossible to abstain from adopting also their 
financial policy. The natural consequences fol- 
lowed. The rigid Tories were alienated from the 5 
government. The votes of the Whigs became nec- 
essary to it. The votes of the Whigs could be 
secured only by further concessions ; and further 
concessions the Queen was induced to make. 
^^ ' At the beginning of the year 1704, the state of lo 
parties bore a close analogy to the state of parties 
in 1826. In 1826, as in 1704, there was a Tory 
ministry divided into two hostile sections. The 
position of Mr. Canning and his friends in 1826 
corresponded to that which Marlborough and is 
Godolphin occupied in 1704. Nottingham and 
Jersey were in 1704 what Lord Eldon and Lord 
Westmoreland were in 1826. The Whigs of 1704 
were in a situation resembling that in which the 
Whigs of 1826 stood. In 1704, Somers, Halifax, 20 
Sunderland, Cowper, were not in office. There 
was no avowed coalition between them and the 
moderate Tories. It is probable that no direct 
communication tending to such a coalition had 
yet taken place ; yet all men saw that such a coali- 25 
tion was inevitable, nay, that it was already half 
formed. Such, or nearly such, was the state of 
things when tidings arrived of the great battle 
fought at Blenheim on the 13th August, 1704. 
By the Whigs the news was hailed with transports so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 85 

of joy and pride. No fault, no cause of quarrel, 
could be remembered by them against the com- 
mander whose genius had, in one day, changed the 
face of Europe, saved the Imperial throne, hum- 
5 bled the house of Bourbon, and secured the Act of 
Settlement against foreign hostility. The feeling 
of the Tories was very different* They could not 
indeed, without imprudence, openly express regret 
at an event so glorious to their country ; but their 
10 congratulations were so cold and sullen as to give deep 
disgust to the victorious general and his friends. 

Godolphin was not a reading man. Whatever 
time he could spare from business he was in the 
habit of spending at Newmarket or at the card- 
is table. But he was not absolutely indifferent to 
poetry ; and he was too intelligent an observer not 
to perceive that literature was a formidable engine 
of political warfare, and that the great Whig leaders 
had strengthened their party and raised their char- 
20 acter by extending a liberal and judicious patronage 
to good writers. He was mortified, and not with- 
out reason, by the exceeding badness of the poems 
which appeared in honor of the battle of Blenheim. 
One of those poems has been rescued from oblivion 
25 by the exquisite absurdity of three lines : — 

"Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, 
And each man mounted on his capering beast ; 
Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals." 

Where to procure better verses the treasurer did 
80 not know. He understood how to negotiate a 






86 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

loan, or remit a subsidy ; he was also well versed in 
the history of running horses and fighting cocks ; 
but his acquaintance among the poets was very 
small. He consulted Halifax ; but Halifax affected 
to decline the office of adviser. He had, he said, s 
done his best, when he had power, to encourage 
men whose abilities and acquirements might do 
honor to their country. Those times were over. 
Other maxims had prevailed. Merit was suffered 
to pine in obscurity ; and the public money was lo 
squandered on the undeserving. ''I do know," 
he added, ''a gentleman who would celebrate the 
battle in a manner worthy of the subject, but I 
will not name him." Godolphin, who was an 
expert at the soft answer which turneth away i5 
wrath, and who was under the necessity of paying 
court to the Whigs, gently replied that there was 
too much ground for Halifax's complaints, but 
that what was amiss should in time be rectified, 
and that in the meantime the services of a man 20 
such as Halifax had described should be liberally 
rewarded. Halifax then mentioned Addison; 
but, mindful of the dignity as well as of the 
pecuniary interest of his friend, insisted that the 
minister should apply in the most courteous man- 25 
ner to Addison himself ; and this Godolphin prom- 
ised to do. 

Addison then occupied a garret up three pair 
of stairs, over a small shop in the Haymarket. In 
this humble lodging he was surprised, on the ao 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 87 

morning which followed the conversation between 
Godolphin and Halifax, by a visit from no less a 
person than the Eight Honorable Henry Boyle, 
then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterwards 

5 Lord Oarleton. This high-born minister had been 
sent by the Lord-Treasurer as ambassador to the 
needy poet. Addison readily undertook the pro- 
posed task, a task which, to so good a Whig, was 
probably a pleasure. When the poem was little 

10 more than half finished, he showed it to Godol- 
phin, who was delighted with it, and particularly 
with the famous similitude of the Angel. Addison 
was instantly appointed to a commissionership 
worth about two hundred pounds a year, and was 

15 assured that this appointment was only an earnest 
of greater favors. 

-- The Campaign came forth, and was as much 
admired by the public as by the minister. It 
pleases us less on the whole than the Epistle to 

20 Halifax. Yet it undoubtedly ranks high among 
the poems which appeared during the interval 
between the death of Dryden and the dawn of 
Pope's genius. The chief merit of the Campaign, 
we think, is that which was noticed by Johnson, 

25 the manly and rational rejection of fiction. The 
first great poet whose works have come down to us 
sang of war long before war became a science or a 
trade. If, in his time, there was enmity between 
two little Greek towns, each poured forth its 

30 crowd of citizens, ignorant of discipline, and 



88 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

armed with implements of labor rudely tm'ned into 
weapons. On each side appeared conspicuous a 
few chiefs, whose wealth had enabled them to pro- 
cure good armor, horses, and chariots, and whose 
leisure had enabled them to practise military exer- 5 
cises. One such chief, if he were a man of great 
strength, agility, and courage, would probably be 
more formidable than twenty common men ; and 
the force and dexterity with which he flung his 
spear might have no inconsiderable share in decid- 10 
ing the event of the day. Such were probably the 
battles with which Homer was familiar. But 
Homer related the actions of men of a former 
generation, of men who sprang from the gods, and 
communed with the gods face to face ; of men, one 15 
of whom could with ease hurl rocks which two 
sturdy hinds of a later period would be unable even 
to lift. He therefore naturally represented their 
martial exploits as resembling in kind, but far sur- 
passing in magnitude, those of the stoutest and so 
most expert combatants of his own age. Achilles, 
clad in celestial armor, drawn by celestial coursers, 
grasping the spear which none but himself could 
raise, driving all Troy and Lycia before him, and 
choking Scamander with dead, was only a magnifi- 25 
cent exaggeration of the real hero, who, strong, 
fearless, accustomed to the use of weapons, guarded 
by a shield and helmet of the best Sidonian fabric, 
and whirled along by horses of Thessalian breed, 
struck down with his own right arm, foe after foe. 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 89 

In all rude societies similar notions are found. 
There are at this day countries where the Life- 
guardsman Shaw would be considered as a much 
greater warrior than the Duke of Wellington. 
5 Bonaparte loved to describe the astonishment with 
which the Mamelukes looked at his diminutive 
figure. Mourad Bey, distinguished above all his 
fellows by his bodily strength, and by the skill 
with which he managed his horse and his sabre, 
10 could not believe that a man who was scarcely five 
feet high, and rode like a butcher, could be the 
greatest soldier in Europe. 

Homer's descriptions of war had therefore as 
much truth as poetry requires. But truth was 
15 altogether wanting to the performances of those 
who, writing about battles which had scarcely any- 
thing in common with the battles of his times, 
servilely imitated his manner. The folly of Silius 
Italicus, in particular, is positively nauseous. He 
20 undertook to record in verse the vicissitudes of a 
great struggle between generals of the first order ; 
and his narrative is made up of the hideous wounds 
which these generals inflicted with their own 
hands. Asdrubal flings a spear, which grazes the 
25 shoulder of the consul Nero ; but Nero sends his 
spear into AsdrubaPs side. Fabius slays Thuris 
and Butes and Maris and Arses, and the long- 
haired Adherbes, and the gigantic Thylis, and 
Sapharus and Monassus, and the trumpeter Mor- 
se inus. Hannibal runs Perusinus through the groin 



90 MACAULAY^S ESSAYS 

with a stake, and breaks the backbone of Telesinus 
with a huge stone. This detestable fashion was 
copied in modern times, and continued to prevail 
down to the age of Addison. Several versifiers 
had described William turning thousands to flight 5 
by his single prowess, and dyeing the Boyne with 
Irish blood. N'ay, so estimable a writer as John 
Philips, the author of the Splendid Shilling, repre- 
sented Marlborough as having won the battle of 
Blenheim merely by strength of muscle and skill in lo 
fence. The following lines may serve as an 
example : — 

* 'Churchill, viewing where 
The violence of Tallard most prevailed, 
Came to oppose his slaughtering arm. With speed 15 
Precipitate he rode, urging his way 
O'er hills of gasping heroes, and fallen steeds 
Polling in death. Destruction, grim with blood, 
Attends his furious course. Around his head 
The glowing balls play innocent, while he so 

With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows 
Among the flying Gauls. In Gallic blood 
He dyes his reeking sword, and strews the ground 
With headless ranks. What can they do? Or how 
Withstand his wide-destroying sword?" 25 

Addison, with excellent sense and taste, 
departed from this ridiculous fashion. He 
reserved his praise for the qualities which made 
Marlborough truly great, — energy, sagacity, mili- 
fcary science. But, above all, the poet extolled the 3o 
firmness of that mind which, in the midst of con- 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 91 

fusion, uproar, and slaughter, examined and dis- 
posed everything with the serene wisdom of a 
higher intelligence. 
y'^' Here it was that he introduced the famous com- 
5 parison of Marlborough to an Angel guiding the 
whirlwind. We will not dispute the general jus- 
tice of Johnson's remarks on this passage. But 
we must point out one circumstance which appears 
to have escaped all the critics. The extraordinary 
10 effect which this simile produced when it first 
appeared, and which to the following generation 
seemed inexplicable, is doubtless to be chiefly 
attributed to a line which most readers now 
regard as a feeble parenthesis : — 

15 '*Such as, of late, o'er pale Britannia passed." 

'I 
Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of the storm. 

The great tempest of November, 1703, the only 

tempest which in our latitude has equalled the 

20 rage of a tropical hurricane, had left a dreadful 
recollection in the minds of all men. No other 
tempest was ever in this country the occasion of a 
parliamentary address or of a public fast. Whole 
fleets had been cast away. Large mansions had 

25 been blown down. One prelate had been buried 
beneath the ruins of his palace. London and Bris- 
tol had presented the appearance of cities just 
sacked. Hundreds of families were still in mourn- 
ing. The prostrate trunks of large trees, and the 

30 ruins of houses, still attested, in all the southern 



92 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

counties, the fury of the blast. The popularity 
which the simile of the Angel enjoyed among 
Addison's contemporaries, has ahyays seemed to us 
to be a remarkable instance of the advantage 
which, in rhetoric and poetry, the particular has 5 
over the general. 

Soon after the Campaign, was published Addi- 
son's Narrative of his Travels in Italy. ' The first 
effect produced by this narrative was disappoint- 
ment. The crowd of readers who expected politics lo 
and scandal, speculations on the projects of Victor 
Amadeus, and anecdotes about the jollities of con- 
vents and amours of cardinals and nuns, were con- 
founded by finding that the writer's mind was 
much more occupied by the war between the is 
Trojans and Eutulians than by the war between 
France and Austria ; and that he seemed to have 
heard no scandal of later date than the gallantries 
of the Empress Faustina. In time, however, the 
judgment of the many was overruled by that of 20 
the few; and, before the book was reprinted, it 
was so eagerly sought that it sold for five times the 
original price. It is still read with pleasure : the 
style is pure and flowing ; the classical quotations 
and allusions are numerous and happy ; and we are 25 
now and then charmed by that singularly humane 
and delicate humor in which Addison excelled all 
men. Yet this agreeable work, even when con- 
sidered merely as the history of a literary tour, 
may justly be censured on account of its faults of 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 93 

omission. We have already said that, though rich 
in extracts from the Latin poets, it contains 
scarcely any references to the Latin orators and 
historians. We must add, that it contains little, 

5 or rather no, information respecting the history 
and literature of modern Italy. To the beat of our 
remembrance, Addison does not mention Dante, 
Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo de' 
Medici, or Machiavelli. He coldly tells ns that at 

10 Ferrara he saw the tomb of Ariosto, and that at 
Venice he heard the gondoliers sing verses of 
Tasso. But for Tasso and Ariosto he cared far 
less than for Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius Apol- 
linaris. The gentle flow of the Ticin brings a line 

15 of Silius to his mind. The sulphurous steam of 
Albula suggests to him several passages of Martial. 
But he has not a word to say of the illustrious dead 
of Santa Croce; he crosses the wood of Kavenna 
without recollecting the Spectre Huntsman; and 

20 wanders up and down Rimini without one thought 
of Francesca. At Paris he had eagerly sought an 
introduction to Boileau ; but he seems not to have 
been at all aware that at Florence he was in the 
vicinity of a poet with whom Boileau could not 

25 sustain a comparison, of the greatest lyric poet of 
modern times, Vincenzio Filicaja. This is the 
more remarkable, because Filicaja was the favorite 
poet of the accomplished Somers, under whose 
protection Addison travelled, and to whom the 

80 account of the Travels is dedicated. The truth is. 



94 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

that Addison knew little, and cared less, about the 
literature of modern Italy. His favorite models 
were Latin. His favorite critics were French. 
Half the Tuscan poetry that he had read seemed to 
him monstrous, and the other half tawdry. 5 

, His Travels were followed by the lively opera of 
Eosamond. This piece was ill set to music, and 
therefore failed on the stage, but it completely suc- 
ceeded in print, and is indeed excellent in its kind. 
The smoothness with which the verses glide, and 10 
the elasticity with which they bound, is, to our 
ears at least, very pleasing. We are inclined to 
think that if Addison had left heroic couplets to 
Pope, and blank verse to Rowe, and had employed 
himself in writing airy and spirited songs, his repu- 15 
tation as a poet would have stood far higher than 
it now does. Some years after his death, Eosa- 
mond was set to nejr musjic by Doctor Arne; and 
was performed with complete success. Several 
passages long retained their popularity, and were 20 
daily sung, during the latter part of George the 
Second's reign, at all the harpsichords in England. 
While Addison thus amused himself,' his pros- 
pects, and the prospects of his party, were con- 
stantly becoming brighter and brighter. In the 25 
spring of 1705 the ministers were freed from the 
restraint imposed by a House of Commons in 
which Tories of the most perverse class had the 
ascendency. The elections were favorable to the 
Whigs. The coalition which had been tacitly and 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 95 

gradually formed was now openly avowed. The 
Great Seal was given to Cowper. Somers and 
Halifax were sworn of the Council. Halifax was 
sent in the following year to carry the decorations 

5 of the order of the garter to the Electoral Prince of 
Hanover, and was accompanied on tliis honorable 
mission by Addison, who had just been made 
Undersecretary of State. The Secretary of State 
under whom Addison first served was Sir Charles 

10 Hedges, a Tory. But Hedges was soon dismissed 
to make room for the most vehement of Whigs, 
Charles, Earl of Sunderland. In every department 
of the state, indeed, the High Churchmen were 
compelled to give place to their opponents. At the 

15 close of 1707, the Tories who still remained in 
office strove to rally, with Harley at their head. 
But the attempt, though favored by the Queen, 
who had always been a Tory at heart, and who had 
now quarrelled with the Duchess of Marlborough, 

20 was unsuccessful. The time was not yet. The 
Captain General was at the height of popularity 
and glory. The Low Church party had a majority 
in Parliament. The country squires and rectors, 
though occasionally uttering a savage growl, were 

25 for the most part in a state of torpor, which lasted 
till they were roused into activity, and indeed into 
madness, by the prosecution of Sacheverell. Har- 
ley and his adherents were compelled to retire. 
The victory of the Whigs was complete. At the 

80 general election of 1708, their strength in the 



96 MACAULAY^S ESSAYS 

House of Commons became irresistible; and before 
the end of that year, Somers was made Lord Presi- 
dent of the Council, and Wharton Lord Lieutenant 
of Ireland. 

Addison sat for Malmsbury in the House of Com- 5 
mons which was elected in 1708. But the House of 
Commons was not the field for him. The bashful- 
ness of his nature made his wit and eloquence use- 
less in debate. He once rose, but could not 
overcome his diffidence, and ever after remained 10 
silent. Nobody can think it strange that a great 
writer should fail as a speaker. But many, prob- 
ably, will think it strange that Addison's failure as 
a speaker should have had no unfavorable effect on 
his success as a politician. In our time, a man of 15 
high rank and great fortune might, though speak- 
ing very little and very ill, hold a considerable 
post. But it would now be inconceivable that a 
mere adventurer, a man who, when out of office, 
must live by his pen, should in a fev/ years become 20 
successively Undersecretary of State, Chief Secre- 
tary for Ireland, and Secretary of State, without 
some oratorical talent. Addison, without high 
birth, and with little property, rose to a post which 
dukes, the heads of the great houses of Talbot, 25 
Eussell, and Bentinck, have thought it an honor 
to fill. Without opening his lips in debate, he 
rose to a post the highest that Chatham or Fox 
ever reached. And this he did before he had been 
nine years in Parliament. We must look for the 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 97 

explanation of this seeming miracle to the peculiar 
circumstances in which that generation was placed. 
During the interval which elapsed between the 
time when the Censorship of the Press ceased, and 

5 the time when parliamentary proceedings began to 
be freely reported, literary talents were, to a public 
man, of much more importance, and oratorical 
talents of much less importance, than in our time. 
At present, the best way of giving rapid and wide 

10 publicity to a fact or an argument is to introduce 
that fact or argument into a speech made in Parlia- 
ment. If a political tract were to appear superior 
to the Conduct of the Allies, or to the best num- 
bers of the Freeliolder^ the circulation of such a 

15 tract would be languid indeed when compared with 
the circulation of every remarkable word uttered in 
the deliberations of the legislature. A speech made 
in the House of Commons at four in the morning 
is on thirty thousand tables before ten. A speech 

20 made on the Monday is read on the Wednesday by 
multitudes in Antrim and Aberdeenshire. The 
orator, by the help of the shorthand writer, has to 
a great extent superseded the pamphleteer. It 
was not so in the reign of Anne. The best speech 

25 could then produce no effect except on those who 
heard it. It was only by means of the press that 
the opinion of the public without doors could be 
influenced ; and the opinion of the public without 
doors could not but be of the highest impor- 

io tance in a country governed by parliaments, and 



98 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

indeed at that time governed by triennial parlia- 
ments. The pen was, therefore, a more formida- 
^J ble political engine than the tongue. Mr. Pitt 
and Mr. Fox contended only in Parliament. But 
Walpole and Pulteney, the Pitt and Fox of an 5 
earlier period, had not done half of what was neces- 
sary, when they sat down amidst the acclama- 
tions of the House of Commons. They had still 
to plead their cause before the country, and 
this they could do only by means of the press, lo 
Their works are now forgotten. But it is certain 
that there were in Grub Street few more assidu- 
ous scribblers of Thoughts, Letters, Answers, 
Eemarks, than these two great chiefs of parties. 
Pulteney, when leader of the Opposition, and is 
possessed of thirty thousand a year, edited the 
Craftsman, Walpole, though not a man of liter- 
ary habits, was the author of at least ten pam- 
phlets, and retouched and corrected many more. 
These facts sufficiently show of how great impor- 20 
tance literary assistance then was to the contending 
parties. St. John was certainly, in Anne's reign, 
the best Tory speaker; Cowper was probably the 
best Whig speaker. But it may well be doubted 
whether St. John did so much for the Tories as 25 
Swift, and whether Cowper did so much for the 
Whigs as Addison. When these things are duly 
considered, it will not be thought strange that 
Addison should have climbed higher in the state 
than any other Englishman has ever, by means 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 99 

merely of literary talents, been able to climb. 
Swift would, in all probability, have climbed as 
high, if he had not been encumbered by his cas- 
sock and his pudding sleeves. As far as the hom- 

5 age of the great went, Swift had as much of it as if 
he had been Lord- Treasurer. 

f:^^ To the influence which Addison derived from his 
literary talents was added all the influence which 
arises from character. The world, always ready to 

10 think the worst of needy political adventurers, was 
forced to make one exception. Eestlessness, vio- 
lence, audacity, laxity of principle, are the vices 
ordinarily attributed to that class of men. But 
faction itself could not deny that Addison had, 

15 through all changes of fortune, been strictly faith- 
ful to his early opinions, and to his early friends; 
that his integrity was without stain ; that his whole 
deportment indicated a fine sense of the becoming ; 
that in the utmost heat of controversy, his zeal was 

20 tempered by a regard for truth, humanity, and 
social decorum ; that no outrage could ever provoke 
him to retaliation unworthy of a Christian and a 
gentleman; and that his only faults were a too 
sensitive delicacy, and a modesty which amounted 

I to bashfulness. 

He was undoubtedly one of the most popular 
men of his time ; and much of his popularity he 
owed, we believe, to that very timidity which his 
friends lamented. That timidity often prevented 

80 him from exhibiting his talents to the best advan- 

L.ofC. 



100 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

tage. But it propitiated Nemesis. It averted that 
envy which would otherwise have been excited by 
fame so splendid, and by so rapid an elevation. 
No man is so great a favorite with the public as he 
who is at once an object of admiration, of respect, 5 
and of pity; and such were the feelings which 
Addison inspired. Those who enjoyed the privi- 
lege of hearing his familiar conversation, declared 
with one voice that it was superior even to his 
writings. The brilliant Mary Montague said, that 10 
she had known all the wits, and that Addison was 
the best company in the world. The malignant 
Pope was forced to own, that there was a charm in 
Addison's talk which could be found nowhere else. 
Swift, when burning with animosity against the 15 
Whigs, could not but confess to Stella that, after 
all, he had never known any associate so agreeable 
as Addison. Steele, an excellent judge of lively 
conversation, said, that the conversation of Addi- 
son was at once the most polite, and the most 20 
mirthful, that could be imagined; that it was 
Terence and Catullus in one, heightened by an 
exquisite something which was neither Terence 
nor Catullus, but Addison alone. Young, an 
excellent judge of serious conversation, said, that 25 
when Addison was at his ease, he went on in a 
noble strain of thought and language, so as to 
chain the attention of every hearer. Nor were 
Addison's great colloquial powers more admirable 
than the courtesy and the softness of heart which 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 101 

appeared in his conversation. At the same time, 
it would be too much to say that he was wholly 
devoid of the malice which is, perhaps, inseparable 
from a keen sense of the ludicrous. He had one 

5 habit which both Swift and Stella applauded, and 
which we hardly know how to blame. If his first 
attempts to set a presuming dunce right were ill 
received, he changed his tone, '^assented with civil 
leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and 

10 deeper into absurdity. That such was his practice 
we should, we think, have guessed from his works. 
The Tatler'^s criticisms on Mr. Softly's sonnet, and 
the Spectator'' s dialogue with the politician who is 
so zealous for the honor of Lady Q — p — t — s, are 

15 excellent specimens of this innocent mischief. 

Such were Addison's talents for conversation. 
But his rare gifts were not exhibited to crowds or 
to strangers. As soon as he entered a large com- 
pany, as soon as he saw an unknown face, his lips 

20 were sealed, and his manners became constrained. 
Xone who met him only in great assemblies would 
have been able to believe that he was the same man 
who had often kept a few friends listening and 
laughing round a table, from the time when the 

25 play ended, till the clock of St. Paul's in Covent 
Garden struck four. Yet, even at such a table he 
was not seen to the best advantage. To enjoy his 
conversation in the highest perfection, it was nec- 
essary to be alone with him, and to hear him, in 

30 his own phrase, think aloud. ''There is no such 



102 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

thing," he used to say, ^'as real conversation, but 
between two persons.'' 
/^4< This timidity, a timidity sm^ely neither ungrace- 
ful nor unamiable, led Addison into the two most 
serious faults which can with justice be imputed to 5 
him. He found that wine broke the spell which 
lay on his fine intellect, and was therefore too 
easily seduced into convivial excess. Such excess 
was in that age regarded, even by grave men, as 
the most venial of all peccadilloes, and was so far 10 
from being a mark of ill-breeding, that it was 
almost essential to the character of a fine gentle- 
man. But the smallest speck is seen on a white 
gi'ound; and almost all the biographers of Addison 
have said something about this failing. Of any 15 
other statesman or writer of Queen Anne's reign, 
we should no more think of saying that he some- 
times took too much wine, than that he wore a 
long wig and a sword. 
(^ ( To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature we 20 
must ascribe another fault which generally arises 
from a very different cause. He became a little 
too fond of seeing himself surrounded by a small 
circle of admirers, to whom he was as a king, or 
rather as a god. All these men were far inferior 25 
to him in ability, and some of them had very seri- 
ous faults. Nor did those faults escape his obser- 
vation ; for, if ever there was an eye which saw 
through and through men, it was the eye of Addi- 
son. But with the keenest observation, and the 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 103 

finest sense of the ridiculous, he had a large 
charity. The feeling with which he looked on 
most of his humble companions was one of benevo- 
lence, slightly tinctured with contempt. He was 

5 at perfect ease in their company ; he was grateful 
for their devoted attachment ; and he loaded them 
with benefits. Their veneration for him appears 
to have exceeded that with which Johnson was 
regarded by Boswell, or Warburton by Hurd. It 

10 was not in the power of adulation to turn such a 
head, or deprave such a heart, as Addison's. But 
it must in candor be admitted that he contracted 
some of the faults which can scarcely be avoided 
by any person who is so unfortunate as to be the 

15 oracle of a small literary coterie. 

(^'7> One member of this little society was Eustace 
Budgell, a young Templar of some literature, and 
a distant relation of Addison. There was at this 
time no stain on the character of Budgell, and it is 

20 not improbable that his career would have been 
prosperous and honorable, if the life of his cousin 
had been prolonged. But, when the master was 
laid in the grave, the disciple broke loose from all 
restraint, descended rapidly from one degree of 

25 vice and misery to another, ruined his fortune by 
follies, attempted to repair it by crimes, and at 
length closed a wicked and unhappy life by self- 
murder. Yet, to the last, the wretched man, 
gambler, lampooner, cheat, forger, as he was, 

30 retained his affection and veneration for Addison, 



104 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

and recorded those feelings in the last lines which 
he traced before he hid himself from infamy nnder 
London Bridge. 

(p\ Another of Addison's favorite companions was 
Ambrose Philips, a good Whig and a middling 5 
poet, who had the honor of bringing into fashion a 
species of composition which has been called, after 
his name, Namby Pamby. But the most remark- 
able members of the little senate, as Pope long 
afterwards called it, were Eichard Steele and 10 
Thomas Tickell. 

?i Steele had known Addison from" childhood. 
They had been together at the Charter House and 
at Oxford; but circumstances had then, for a time, 
separated them widely. Steele had left college 15 
without taking a degree, had been disinherited by 
a rich relation, had led a vagrant life, had served 
in the army, had tried to find the philosopher's 
stone, and had written a religious treatise and 
several comedies. He was one of those people so 
whom it is impossible either to hate or to respect. 
His temper was sweet, his affections warm, his 
spirits lively, his passions strong, and his prin- 
ciples weak. His life was spent in sinning and 
repenting; in inculcating what was right, and 25 
doing what was wi^ong. In speculation, he was a 
man of piety and honor ; in practice he was much 
of the rake and a little of the swindler. He was, 
however, so good-natured that it was not easy to be 
seriously angry with him, and that even rigid 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 105 

moralists felt more inclined to pity than to blame 
him, when he diced himself into a spunging-house 
or drank himself into a fever. Addison regarded 
Steele with kindness not nnmingled with scorn, 

5 tried, with little success, to keep him out of 
scrapes, introduced him to the great, procured a 
good place for him, corrected his plays, and, 
though by no means rich, lent him large sums of 
money. One of these loans appears, from a letter 

10 dated in August, 1708, to have amounted to a 
thousand pounds. These pecuniary transactions 
probably led to frequent bickerings. It is said 
that, on one occasion, Steele's negligence, or dis- 
honesty, provoked Addison to repay himself by the 

15 help of a bailiff. We cannot join with Miss Aikin 
in rejecting this story. Johnson heard it from 
Savage, who heard it from Steele. Few private 
traasa^tions which took place a hundred and 
twenty years ago, are proved by stronger evidence 

20 than this. But we can by no means agree with 
those who condemn Addison's severity. The most 
amiable of mankind may well be moved to indigna- 
tion, when what he has earned hardly, and lent 
with great inconvenience to himself, for the pur- 

25 pose of relieving a friend in distress, is squandered 
with insane profusion. We will illustrate our 
meaning by an example which is not the less 
striking because it is taken from fiction. Dr. 
Harrison, in Fielding's Amelia, is represented as 

30 the most benevolent of human beings; yet he 



106 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

takes in execution, not only the goods, but the 
person of his friend Booth. Dr. Harrison resorts 
to this strong measure because he has been in- 
formed that Booth, while pleading poverty as an 
excuse for not paying just debts, has been buying 5 
fine jewellery, and setting up a coach. No person 
who is well acquainted with Steele's life and cor- 
respondence can doubt that he behaved quite as ill 
to Addison as Booth was accused of behaving to 
Dr. Harrison. The real history, we have little 10 
doubt, was something like this : — A letter comes to 
Addison, imploring help in pathetic terms, and 
promising reformation and speedy repayment. 
Poor Dick declares that he has not an inch of 
candle, or a bushel of coals, or credit with the 15 
butcher for a shoulder of mutton. Addison is 
moved. He determines to deny himself some 
medals which are wanting to his series of the 
Twelve Caesars ; to put off buying the new edition 
of Bayle's Dictionary; and to wear his old sword 20 
and buckles another year. In this way he manages 
to send a hundred pounds to his friend. The next 
day he calls on Steele, and finds scores of gentle- 
men and ladies assembled. The fiddles are play- 
ing. The table is gi^oaning under champagne, 25 
burgundy, and pyramids of sweetmeats. Is it 
strange that a man whose kindness is thus abused, 
should send sheriff's officers to reclaim what is due 
to him? 

Tickell was a young man, fresh from Oxford, 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 107 

who had introduced himself to public notice by 
writing a most ingenious and graceful little poem 
in praise of the opera of Eosamond. He deserved, 
and at length attained, the first place in Addison's 

5 friendship. For a time Steele and Tickell were on 

good terms. But they loved Addison too much to 

love each other, and at length became as bitter 

enemies as the rival bulls in Virgil. 

M *- At the close of 1708 Wharton became Lord 

10 Lieutenant of Ireland, and appointed Addison 
Chief Secretary. Addison was consequently under 
the necessity of quitting London for Dublin. 
Besides the chief secretaryship, which was then 
worth about two thousand pounds a year, he 

15 obtained a patent appointing him keeper of the 

Irish Kecords for life, with a salary of three or 

four hundred a year. Budgell accompanied his 

cousin in the capacity of private secretary. 

\ \. Wharton and Addison had nothing in common 

20 but Whiggism. The Lord Lieutenant was not 
only licentious and corrupt, but was distinguished 
from other libertines and Jobbers by a callous im- 
pudence which presented the strongest contrast to 
the Secretary's gentleness and delicacy. Many 

25 parts of the Irish administration at this time 
appear to have deserved serious blame. But 
against Addison there was not a murmur. He 
long afterwards asserted, what all the evidence 
which we have ever seen tends to prove, that 

30 his diligence and integrity gained the friend- 



n^ 



108 MACAULAY^S ESSAYS 

ship of all the most considerable persons in 
Ireland. 

The parliamentary career of Addison in Ireland 
has, we think, wholly escaped the notice of all his 
biographers. He was elected member for the 5 
borough of Oavan in the summer of 1709 ; and in 
the journals of two sessions his name frequently 
occurs. Some of the entries appear to indicate 
that he so far overcame his timidity as to make 
speeches. Nor is this by any means improbable; lo 
for the Irish House of Commons was a far less 
formidable audience than the English House ; and 
many tongues which were tied by fear in the 
greater assembly became fluent in the smaller. 
Gerard Hamilton, for example, who, from fear of is 
losing the fame gained by his single speech, sat 
mute at Westminster during forty years, spoke 
with great effect at Dublin when he was secretary 
to Lord Halifax. 

While Addison was in Ireland, an event occurred 20 
to which he owes his high and permanent rank 
among British writers. As yet his fame rested on 
performances which, though highly respectable, 
were not built for duration, and which would, if 
he had produced nothing else, have now been 35 
almost forgotten ; on some excellent Latin verses ; 
on some English verses which occasionally rose 
above mediocrity; and on a book of travels, agree- 
ably written, but not indicating any extraordinary 
powers of mind. These works showed him to be a so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 109 

man of taste, sense, and learning. The time had 
come when he was to prove himself a man of 
genius, and to enrich our literature with composi- 
tions which will live as long as the English lan- 

5 guage. 

i M In the spring of 1709 Steele formed a literary 
project, of which he was far indeed from foresee- 
ing the consequences. Periodical papers had 
during many years been published in London. 

10 Most of these were political ; but in some of them 
questions of morality, taste, and love-casuistry had 
been discussed. The literary merit of these works 
was small indeed ; and even their names are now 
known only to the curious. 

15 Steele had been appointed Gazetteer by Sunder- 

"^.Oland, at the request, it is said, of Addison, and 

thus had access to foreign intelligence earlier and 

more authentic than was in those times within the 

reach of an ordinary news-writer. This circum- 

20 stance seems to have suggested to him the scheme 
of publishing a periodical paper on a new plan. It 
was to appear on the days on which the post left 
London for the country, which were, in that 
generation, the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Satur- 

25 days. It was to contain the foreign news, accounts 
of theatrical representations, and the literary gossip 
of Will's and of the Grecian. It was also to con- 
tain remarks on the fashionable topics of the day, 
compliments to beauties, pasquinades on noted 

30 sharpers, and criticisms on popular preachers. 



110 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

The aim of Steele does not appear to have been at 
first higher than this. He was not ill-qualified to 
conduct the work which he had planned. His 
public intelligence he drew from the best sources. 
He knew the town, and had paid dear for his 5 
knowledge. He had read much more than the 
dissipated men of that time were in the habit of 
reading. He was a rake among scholars, and a 
scholar among rakes. His style was easy and not 
incorrect ; and though his wit and humor were of lo 
no high order, his gay animal spirits imparted to 
his compositions an air of vivacity which ordinary 
readers could hardly distinguish from comic 
genius. His writings have been well compared to 
those light wines which, though deficient in body is 
and flavor, are yet a pleasant small drink, if not 
kept too long, or carried too far. 
^^ Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was an 
imaginary person, almost as well known in that 
age as Mr. Paul Pry or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in 20 
ours. Swift had assumed the name of Bickerstaff 
in a satirical pamphlet against Partridge, the 
maker of almanacs. Partridge had been fool 
enough to publish a furious reply. Bickerstaff 
had rejoined in a second pamphlet still more 25 
diverting than the first. All the wits had 
combined to keep up the joke, and the town was 
long in convulsions of laughter. Steele deter- 
mined to employ the name which this controversy 
had made popular; and in April, 1709, it was 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 111 

announced that Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrolo- 
ger, was about to publish a paper called the Tatler, 
Addison had not been consulted about this 
scheme ; but as soon as he heard of it he deter- 

5 mined to give his assistance. The effect of that 
assistance cannot be better described than in 
Steele's own words. ''I fared," he said, ''like a 
distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbor 
to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When 

10 I had once called him in, I could not subsist with- 
out dependence on him." "The paper," he says 
elsewhere, ''was advanced indeed. It was raised 
to a greater thing than I intended it." 

It is probable that Addison, when he sent across 

15 St. George's Channel his first contributions to the 
Tatler^ had no notion of the extent and variety of 
his own powers. He was the possessor of a vast 
mine, rich with a hundred ores. But he had 
been acquainted only with the least precious part 

20 of his treasures, and had hitherto contented him- 
self with producing sometimes copper and some- 
times lead, intermingled with a little silver. All 
at once, and by mere accident, he had lighted on 
an inexhaustible vein of the finest gold. 

25 V The mere choice and arrangement of his words 
would have sufficed to make his essays classical. For 
never, not even by Dryden, not even by Temple, 
had the English language been written with such 
sweetness, grace, and facility. But this was the 

80 smallest part of Addison's praise. Had he clothed 



112 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

his thoughts ^in the half French style of Horace 
Walpole, or in the half Latin style of Dr. John- 
son, or in the half German jargon of the present 
day, his genius would have triumphed over all 
faults of manner. As a moral satirist he stands s 
unrivalled. If ever the best Tatlers and Spec- 
tators were equalled in their own kind, we should 
be inclined to guess that it must have been by the 
lost comedies of Menander. 
^"^ In wit, properly so called, Addison was not lo 
inferior to Cowley or Butler. No single ode of 
Cowley contains so many happy analogies as are 
crowded into the lines to Sir Godfrey Kneller ; and 
we would undertake to collect from the Spectators 
as great a number of ingenious illustrations as can 15 
be found in Hudibras. The still higher faculty of 
invention Addison possessed in still larger meas- 
ure. The numerous fictions, generally original, 
often wild and grotesque, but always singularly 
graceful and happy, which are found in his essays, 20 
fully entitle him to the rank of a great poet, a 
rank to which his metrical compositions gi^e him 
no claim. As an observer of life, of manners, of 
all the shades of human character, he stands in the 
first class. And what he observed he had the art 25 
of communicating in two widely different ways. 
He could describe virtues, vices, habits, whims as 
well as Clarendon. But he could do something 
better. He could call human beings into exist- 
ence, and make them exhibit themselves. If we 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 113 

wish to find anything more vivid than Addison's 
best portraits, we must go either to Shakespeare or 
to Cervantes. 

"^''^1 But what shall we say of Addison's hujnor, of 

5 his sense of the ludicrous, of his power of awaken- 
ing that sense in others^ and of drawing mirth from 
incidents which occur every day, and from little 
peculiarities of temper and manner, such as may 
be found in every man? We feel the charm : we 

10 give ourselves up to it ; but we strive in vain to 
analyze it. 

^^i*. Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's 
peculiar pleasantry is to compare it with the pleas- 
antry of some other great satirists. The three 

15 most eminent masters of the art of ridicule during 
the eighteenth century, were, we conceive, Addi- 
son, Swift, and Voltaire. Which of the three had 
the greatest power of moving laughter may be 
questioned. But each of them, within his own 

20 domain, was supreme. 

^ Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merri- 
ment is without disguise or restraint. He gam- 
bols ; he grins ; he shakes his sides ; he points the 
finger; he turns up the nose; he shoots out the 

So tongue. The manner of Swift is the very opposite 
to this. He moves laughter, but never joins in it. 
He appears in his works such as he appeared in 
society. All the company are convulsed with 
merriment, while the Dean, the author of all the 

so mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, and even 



114 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

sourness of aspect, and gives utterance to the most 
eccentric and ludicrous fancies, with the air of a 
man reading the commination service. 

The manner of Addison is as remote from that 
of Swift as from that of Voltaire. He neither 5 
laughs out like the French wit, nor, like the Irish 
wit, throws a double portion of severity into his 
countenance while laughing inwardly; but pre- 
serves a look peculiarly his own, a look of demure 
serenity, disturbed only by an arch sparkle of the 10 
eye, an almost imperceptible elevation of the brow, 
an almost imperceptible curl of the lip. His tone 
is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of a 
cynic. It is that of a gentleman, in whom the 
quickest sense of the ridiculous is constantly 15 
tempered by good nature and good breeding. 
-' We own that the humor of Addison is, in our 
opinion, of a more delicious flavor than the humor 
of either Swift or Voltaire. Thus much, at least, 
is certain, that both Swift and Voltaire have been 20 
successfully mimicked, and that no man has yet 
been able to mimic Addison. The letter of the 
Abbe Coyer to Pansophe is Voltaire all over, and 
imposed, during a long time, on the Academicians 
of Paris. There are passages in Arbuthnot's 25 
satirical works which we, at least, cannot distin- 
guish from Swift's best writing. But of the many 
eminent men who have made Addison their 
model, though several have copied his mere diction 
with happy effect, none have been able to catch so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 115 

the tone of his pleasantry. In the Worlds in the 
Connoisseur^ in the Mirror^ in the Lounger^ there 
are numerous papers written in obvious imitation 
of his Tatlers and Spectators. Most of these 

5 papers have some merit ; many are very lively and 

amusing; but there is not a single one which 

could be passed off as Addison's on a critic of the 

smallest perspicacity. 

^ ' But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison 

10 from Swift, from Voltaire, from almost all the 
other great masters of ridicule, is the grace, the 
nobleness, the moral purity, which we find even in 
his merriment. Severity, gradually hardening and 
darkening into misanthropy, characterizes the 

15 works of Swift. The nature of Voltaire was, 
indeed, not inhuman; but he venerated nothing. 
Neither in the masterpieces of art nor in the purest 
examples of virtue, neither in the Great First Cause 
nor in the awful enigma of the grave, could he see 

80 anything but subjects for drollery. The more 
solemn and august the theme, the more monkey- 
like was his grimacing and chattering. The 
mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephistopheles ; the 
mirth of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If, as 

25 Soame Jenyns oddly imagined, a portion of the 
happiness of seraphim and just men made perfect 
be derived from an exquisite perception of the 
ludicrous, their mirth must surely be none other 
than the mirth of Addison; a mirth consistent 

30 with tender compassion for all that is frail, and 



116 MAGAULAY'S ESSAYS 

with profound reverence for all that is sublime. 
Nothing ^eat, nothing amiable, no moral duty, 
'V no doctrine of natural or revealed religion, has ever 
been associated by Addison with any degrading 
idea. His humanity is without a parallel in liter- n 
ary history. The highest proof of virtue is to 
possess boundless power without abusing it. No 
kind of power is more formidable than the power 
of making men ridiculous; and that power Addi- 
son possessed in boundless measure. How grossly lo 
that power was abused by Swift and by Voltaire is 
well known. But of Addison it may be confidently 
affirmed that he has blackened no man's character, 
nay, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, 
to find in all the volumes which he has left us a is 
single taunt which can be called ungenerous or 
unkind. Yet he had detractors, whose malignity 
might have seemed to justify as terrible a revenge 
as that which men, not superior to him in genius, 
wreaked on Bettesworth and on Franc de Pompig- 20 
nan. He was a politician ; he was the best writer 
of his party; he lived in times of fierce excitement, 
in times when persons of high character and station 
stooped to scurrility such as is now practised only 
by the basest of mankind. Yet no provocation 25 
and no example could induce him to return railing 
for railing, 
cj' Of the service which his Essays rendered to 
morality it is difficult to speak too highly. It is 
true, that, when the Tatler appeared, that age of so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 117 

outrageous profaneness and licentiousness which 
followed 'Ihe Eestoration had passed away. 
Jeremy Collier had shamed the theatres into some- 
thing which, compared with the excesses of Ether- 

5 ege and Wycherley, might be called decency. Yet 
there still lingered in the public mind a pernicious 
notion that there was some connection between 
genius and profligacy ; between the domestic vir- 
tues and the sullen formality of the Puritans. 

10 That error it is the glory of Addison to have dis- 
pelled. He taught the nation that the faith and 
the morality of Hale and Tillotson might be found 
in company with wit more sparkling than the wit 
of Congreve, and with humor richer than the 

15 humor of Vanbrugh. So effectually, indeed, did 
he retort on vice the mockery which had recently 
been directed against virtue, that, since his time, 
the open violation of decency has always been con- 
sidered among us as the mark of a fool. And this 

20 revolution, the greatest and most salutary ever 
effected by any satirist, he accomplished, be it 
remembered, without writing one personal lam- 
poon. 

In the early contributions of Addison to the 

25 Tatter^ his peculiar powers were not fully ex- 
hibited. Yet from the first, his superiority to all 
his coadjutors was evident. Some of his later 
Tatlers are fully equal to anything that he ever 
wrote. Among the portraits, we most admire 

30 Tom Folio, Ned Softly, and the Political Uphol- 



118 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

sterer. The proceedings of the Court of Honor, 
the Thermometer of Zeal, the story of the Frozen 
Words, the Memoirs of the Shilling, are excellent 
specimens of that ingenious and lively species of 
fiction in which Addison excelled all men. There 5 
is one still better paper of the same class. But 
though that paper, a hundred and thirty-three 
years ago, was probably thought as edifying as one 
of Smalridge's sermons, we dare not indicate it to 
the squeamish readers of the nineteenth century, lo 

q^ \ During the session of Parliament which com- 
menced in November, 1709, and which the im- 
peachment of Sacheverell has made memorable, 
Addison appears to have resided in London. The 
Tatlerjw^>^ now more popular than any periodical is 
paper had ever been ; and his connection with it 
was generally known. It was not known, how- 
ever, that almost everything good in the Tatler was 
his. The truth is, that the fifty or sixty numbers 
which we owe to him were not merely the best, ao 
but so decidedly the best that any five of them are 
more valuable than all the two hundred numbers 
in which he had no share. 

q t He required, at this time, all the solace which 
he could derive from literary success. The Queen 35 
had always disliked the Whigs. She had during 
some years disliked the Marlborough family. But, 
reigning by a disputed title, she could not venture 
directly to oppose herself to a majority of both 
Houses of Parliament ; and, engaged as she was in so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 119 

a war on the event of which her own crown was 
staked, she could not venture to disgrace a great 
and successful general. But at length, in the year 
1710, the causes which had restrained her from 

5 showing her aversion to the Low Church party 
ceased to operate. The trial of Sacheverell pro- 
duced an outbreak of public feeling scarcely less 
violent than the outbreaks which we can ourselves 
remember in 1820, and in 1831. The country 

10 gentlemen, the country clergymen, the rabble of 
the towns, were all, for once, on the same side. 
It was clear that, if a general election took place 
before the excitement abated, the Tories would 
have a majority. The services of Marlborough 

15 had been so splendid that they were no longer 
necessary. The Queen's throne was secure from 
all attack on the part of Louis. Indeed, it seemed 
much more likely that the English and German 
armies would divide the spoils of Versailles and 

80 Marli than that a Marshal of France would bring 
back the Pretender to St. James's. The Queen, 
acting by the advice of Harley, determined to dis- 
miss her servants. In June the change com- 
menced. Sunderland was the first who fell. The 

85 Tories exulted over his fall. The Whigs tried, 
during a few weeks, to persuade themselves that 
her majesty had acted only from personal dislike to 
the Secretary, and that she meditated no further 
alteration. But, early in August, Godolphin was 

30 surprised by a letter from Anne, which directed 



120 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

him to break his white staff. Even after this 
event, the irresolution or dissimulation of Harley 
kept up the hopes of the Whigs during another 
month ; and then the ruin became rapid and vio- 
lent. The Parliament was dissolved. The 5 
ministers were turned out. The Tories were 
called to office. The tide of popularity ran vio- 
lently in favor of the High Church party. That 
party, feeble in the late House of Commons, was 
now irresistible. The power which the Tories had 10 
thus suddenly acquired, they used with blind and 
stupid ferocity. The howl which the whole pack 
set up for prey and for blood appalled even him 
who had roused and unchained them. When, at 
this distance of time, we calmly review the conduct 15 
of the discarded ministers, we cannot but feel a 
movement of indignation at the injustice with 
which they were treated. No body of men had 
ever administered the government with more 
energy, ability, and moderation; and their success 20 
had been proportioned to their wisdom. They 
had saved Holland and Germany. They had 
humbled France. They had, as it seemed, all but 
torn Spain from the house of Bourbon. They had 
made England the first power in Europe. At 25 
home they had united England and Scotland. 
They had respected the rights of conscience and 
the liberty of the subject. They retired, leaving 
their 'country at the height of prosperity and 
glory. And yet they were pursued to their retreat so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 121 

by such a roar of obloquy as was never raised 
against the government which threw away thirteen 
colonies, or against the government which sent a 
gallant army to perish in the ditches of Walcheren. 

^ None of the Whigs suffered more in the general 
wreck than Addison. He had just sustained some 
heavy pecuniary losses, of the nature of which we 
are imperfectly informed, when his secretaryship 
was taken from him. He had reason to believe 

10 that he should also be deprived of the small Irish 
ofl&ce which he held by patent. He had just 
resigned his fellowship. It seems probable that 
he had already ventured to raise his eyes to a great 
lady, and that, while his political friends were in 

15 power, and while his own fortunes were rising, he 
had been, in the phrase of the romances which 
were then fashionable, permitted to hope. But 
Mr. Addison the ingenious writer, and Mr. Addi- 
son the chief secretary, were, in her ladyship's 

20 opinion, two very different persons. All these 
calamities united, however, could not disturb the 
serene cheerfulness of a mind conscious of inno- 
cence, and rich in its own wealth. He told his 
friends, with smiling resignation, that they ought 

25 to admire his philosophy ; that he had lost at once 
his fortune, his place, his fellowship, and his mis- 
tress; that he must think of turning tutor again; 
and yet that his spirits were as good as ever. 

He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity 

30 which his friends had incurred, he had no share. 



122 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Such was the esteem with which he was regarded 
that, while the most violent measures were taken 
for the purpose of forcing Tory members on Whig 
corporations, he was returned to Parliament with- 
out even a contest. Swift, who was now in Lon- 
don, and who had already determined on quitting 
the Whigs, wrote to Stella in these remai'kable 
words: ''The Tories carry it among the new mem- 
bers six to one. Mr. Addison's election has 
passed easy and undisputed ; and I believe if he 
had a mind to be king he w^ould hardly be 
refused." 

ii V The good will with which the Tories regarded 
Addison is the more honorable to him, because it 
had not been purchased by any concession on his 
part. During the general election he published a 
political journal, entitled the Wliig Examiner. 
Of that journal it may be sufficient to say that 
Johnson, in spite of his strong political prejudices, 
pronounced it to be superior in wit to any of 
Swift's writings on the other side. When it ceased 
to appear. Swift, in a letter to Stella, expressed his 
exultation at the death of so formidable an 
antagonist. "He might well rejoice," says John- 
son, "at the death of that which he could not have 
killed." "On no occasion," he adds, "was the 
genius of Addison more vigorously exerted, and on 
none did the superiority of his powers more evi- 
dently appear." 

c^ t The only use which Addison appears to have 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 123 

made of the favor with which he was regarded by 
the Tories was to save some of his friends from the 
general ruin of the Whig party. He felt himself 
to be in a situation which made it his duty to take 

5 a decided part in politics. But the case of Steele 
and of Ambrose Philips was different. For 
Philips, Addison even condescended to solicit, 
with what success we have not ascertained. Steele 
held two places. He was Gazetteer, and he was 

10 also a Commissioner of Stamps. The Gazette was 
taken from him. But he was suffered to retain 
his place in the Stamp Office, on an implied under- 
standing that he should not be active against the 
new government; and he was, during more than 

15 two years, induced by Addison to observe this 
armistice with tolerable fidelity. 

Isaac Bickerstaff accordingly became silent upon 
politics, and the article of news which had once 
formed about one-third of his paper, altogether 

20 disappeared. The Tatler had completely changed 
its character. It was now nothing but a series of 
essays on books, morals, and manners. Steele 
therefore resolved to bring it to a close, and to 
commence a new work on an improved plan. It 

25 was announced that this new work would be pub- 
lished daily. The undertaking was generally 
regarded as bold, or rather rash; but the event 
amply justified the confidence with which Steele 
relied on the fertility of Addison's genius. On 

30 the second of January, 1711, appeared the last 



124 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Tatler. At the beginning of March following 
appeared the first of an incomparable series of 
papers, containing observations on life and liter- 
ature by an imaginary spectator. 

The Spectator himself was conceived and drawn 5 
by Addison; and it is not easy to doubt that the 
portrait was meant to be in some features a like- 
ness of the painter. The Spectator is a gentleman 
who, after passing a studious youth at the univer- 
sity, has travelled on classic ground, and has lo 
bestowed much attention on curious points of 
antiquity. He has, on his return, fixed his resi- 
dence in London, and has observed all the forms of 
life which are to be found in that great city ; has 
daily listened to the wifcs of Will's, has smoked is 
with the philosophers of the Grecian, and has 
mingled with the parsons at Child's, and with the 
politicians at the St. James's. In the morning, he 
often listens to the hum of the Exchange ; in the 
evening, his face is constantly to be seen in the pit 20 
of Drury Lane Theatre. But an insurmountable 
bashfulness prevents him from opening his mouth 
except in a small circle of intimate friends. 
^\ { These friends were first sketched by Steele. 
Four of the club, the templar, the clergyman, the 25 
soldier, and the merchant, were uninteresting fig- 
ures, fit only for a background. But the other 
two, an old country baronet and an old town rake, 
though not delineated with a very delicate pencil, 
had some good strokes. Addison took the rude 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 125 

outlines into his own hands, retouched them, 
colored them, and is in truth the creator of the Sir 
Koger de Coverley and the Will Honeycomb with 
whom we are all familiar. 

..sfv The plan of the Spectator must be allowed to be 
both original and eminently happy. Every valu- 
able essay in the series may be read with pleasure 
separately ; yet the five or six hundred essays form 
a whole, and a whole which has the interest of a 

10 novel. It must be remembered, too, that at that 
time no novel, giving a lively and powerful picture 
of the common life and manners of England, had 
appeared. Eichardson was working as a composi- 
tor. Fielding was robbing birds' nests. Smollett 

15 was not yet born. The narrative, therefore, which 
connects together the Spectator's essays, gave to 
our ancestors their first taste of an exquisite and 
untried pleasure. That narrative was indeed con- 
structed with no art or labor. The events were 

20 such events as occur every day. Sir Eoger comes 
up to town to see Eugenio, as the worthy baronet 
always calls Prince Eugene, goes with the Specta- 
tor on the water to Spring Gardens, walks among 
the tombs in the Abbey, and is frightened by the 

25 Mohawks, but conquers his apprehension so far as 
to go to the theatre when the Distressed Mother is 
acted. The Spectator pays a visit in the summer 
to Coverley Hall, is charmed with the old house, 
the old butler, and the old chaplain, eats a jack 

80 caught by Will Wimble, rides to the assizes, and 



126 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

hears a point of law discussed by Tom Touchy. 
At last a letter from the honest butler brings to the 
club the news that Sir Roger is dead. Will 
Honeycomb marries and reforms at sixty. The 
club breaks up ; and the Spectator resigns his 5 
functions. Such events can hardly be said to form 
a plot ; yet they are related with such truth, such 
grace, such wit, such humor, such pathos, such 
knowledge of the human heart, such knowledge of 
the ways of the world, that they charm us on the lo 
hundredth perusal. We have not the least doubt 
that if Addison had written a novel, on an exten- 
sive plan, it would have been superior to any that 
we possess. As it is, he is entitled to be con- 
sidered not only as the greatest of the English is 
essayists, but as the forerunner of the great Eng- 
lish novelists. 
\^y\ We say this of Addison alone; for Addison is 
the Spectator. About three-sevenths of the work 
are his ; and it is no exaggeration to say, that his 20 
worst essay is as good as the best essay of any of 
his coadjutors. His best essays approach near to 
absolute perfection; nor is their excellence more 
wonderful than their variety. His invention never 
seems to flag ; nor is he ever under the necessity of 25 
repeating himself, or of wearing out a subject. 
There are no dregs in his wine. He regales us 
after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held 
that there was only one good glass in a bottle. As 
soon as we have tasted the first sparkling foam of 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 127 

a jest, it is withdrawn, and a fresh draught of 
nectar is at our lips. On the Monday, we have an 
allegory as lively and ingenious as Lucian's Auc- 
tion of Lives ; on the Tuesday, an Eastern apologue 

5 as richly colored as the Tales of Scheherezade ; on 
the Wednesday, a character described with the 
skill of La Bruyere; on the Thursday, a scene 
from common life, equal to the best chapters in 
the Vicar of Wakefield; on the Friday, some sly 

10 Horatian pleasantry on fashionable follies, — on 

hoops, patches, or puppet-shows; and on the 

Saturday, a religious meditation, which will bear a 

comparison with the finest passages in Massillon. 

It is dangerous to select where there is so much 

15 that deserves the highest praise. We will venture, 
however, to say, that any person who wishes to 
form a just notion of the extent and variety of 
Addison's powers, will do well to read at one sit- 
ting the following papers : The two Visits to th^ 

20 Abbey, the visit to the Exchange, the Journal o^ 
the Eetired Citizen, the Vision of Mirza, th^ 
Transmigrations of Pug the Monkey, and thq 
Death of Sir Eoger de Coverley. 

X The least valuable of Addison's contributions tq 

25 the Spectator are, in. the judgment of our age, hisi 
critical papers. Yet his critical papers are always 
luminous, and often ingenious. The very worst 
of them must be regarded as creditable to him, 
when the character of the school in which he had 

30 been trained is fairly considered. The best of 



128 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS 

them were much too good for his readers. In 
truth, he was not so far behind our generation aa 
he was before his own. No essays in the Spectator 
were more censured and derided than those in 
which he raised his voice against the contempt 5 
with which our fine old ballads were regarded, and 
showed the scoffers that the same gold which, 
burnished and polished, gives lustre to the -^neid 
and the Odes of Horace, is mingled with the rude 
dross of Chevy Chase. lo 

'" It is not strange that the success of the Spectator 
should have been such as no similar work has ever 
obtained. The number of copies daily distributed 
was at first three thousand. It subsequently 
increased, and had risen to near four thousand is 
when the stamp tax was imposed. That tax was 
fatal to a crowd of journals. The Spectator, how- 
ever, stood its ground, doubled its price, and, 
though its circulation fell off, still yielded a large 
revenue both to the state and to the authors. For 20 
particular papers, the demand was immense; of 
some, it is said, twenty thousand copies were 
required. But this was not all. To have the 
Spectator served up every morning with the bohea 
and rolls was a luxury for the few. The majority 25 
were content to wait till essays enough had 
appeared to form a volume. Ten thousand copies 
of each volume were immediately taken off, and 
new editions were called for. It must be remem- 
bered, that the population of England was then 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 129 

liardly a third of what it now is. The number of 
Englishmen who were in the habit of reading, was 
probably not a sixth of what it now is. A shop- 
keeper or a farmer who fonnd any pleasure in 

5 literature, was a rarity. Nay, there was doubtless 
more than one knight of the shire whose country 
seat did not contain ten books, receipt-books and 
books on farriery included. In these circumstan- 
ces, the sale of the Spectator must be considered as 

10 indicating a popularity quite as great as that of the 

most successful works of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. 

Dickens in our own time. 

> ^ ^') At the close of 1712 the Spectator ceased to 

appear. It was probably felt that the shortfaced 

15 gentleman and his club had been long enough 
before the town ; and that it was time to withdraw 
them, and to replace them by a new set of charac- 
ters. In a few weeks the first number of the 
Guardian was published. But the Guardiaii was 

so unfortunate both in its birth and in its death. It 
began in dulness and disappeared in a tempest of 
faction. The original plan was bad. Addison 
contributed nothing till sixty-six numbers had 
appeared ; and it was then impossible to make the 

25 Guardian what the Spectator had been. Nestor 
Ironside and the Miss Lizards were people to whom 
even he could impart no interest. He could only 
furnish some excellent little essays, both serious 
and comic ; and this he did. 

80 Why Addison gave no assistance to the Guard- 



130 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

ian during the first two months of its existence, 
is a question which has puzzled the editors and 
biographers, but which seems to us to admit of a 
very easy solution. He was then engaged in bring- 
ing his Cato on the stage. 5 
I ^ y The first four acts of this drama had been lying 
in his desk since his return from Italy. His 
modest and sensitive nature shrank from the risk of 
a public and shameful failure; and, though all 
who saw the manuscript were loud in praise, some 10 
thought it possible that an audience might become 
impatient even of very good rhetoric, and advised 
Addison to print the play without hazarding a 
representation. At length, after many fits of 
apprehension, the poet yielded to the urgency of 15 
his political friends, who hoped that the public 
would discover some analogy between the followers 
of Caesar and the Tories, between Sempronius and 
the apostate Whigs, between Cato, struggling to 
the last for the liberties of Eome, and the band of 20 
patriots who still stood firm round Halifax and 
Wharton. 

Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury 
Lane Theatre, without stipulating for any advan- 
tage to himself. They, therefore, thought them- 25 
selves bound to spare no cost in scenery and 
dresses. The decorations, it is true, would not 
have pleased the skilful eye of Mr. Macready. 
Juba's waistcoat blazed with gold lace; Marcia's 
hoop was worthy of a duchess on the birthday ; and so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 131 

Cato wore a wig worth fifty guineas. The pro- 
logue was written by Pope, and is undoubtedly a 
dignified and spirited composition. The part of 
the hero was excellently played by Booth. Steele 

6 undertook to pack a house. The boxes were in a 
blaze with the stars of the Peers in Opposition. 
The pit was crowded with attentiye and friendly 
listeners from the Inns of Court and the literary 
coffee-houses. Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Governor of 

10 the Bank of England, was at the head of a power- 
ful body of auxiliaries from the city, warm men 
and true Whigs, but better known at Jonathan's 
and Garraway's than in the haunts of wits and 
critics. 

15^ These precautions were quite superfluous. The 

^ Tories, as a body, regarded Addison with no un- 
kind feelings. Nor was it for their interest, pro- 
fessing, as they did, profound reverence for law 
and prescription, and abhorrence both of popular 

20 insurrections and of standing armies, to appropri- 
ate to themselves reflections thrown on the great 
military chief and demagogue, who, with the sup- 
port of the legions and of the common people, 
subverted all the ancient institutions of his coun- 

25 try. Accordingly, every shout that was raised by 

the members of the Kit Cat was echoed by the 

High Churchmen of the October ; and the curtain 

,at length fell amidst thunders of unanimous 

^ applause. 

30 The delight and admiration of the town were 



132 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

described by the Guardian in terms which we 
might attribute to partiality, were it not that the 
Examiner^ the organ of the ministry, held similar 
language. The Tories, indeed, found much to 
sneer at in the conduct of their opponents. 5 
Steele had on this, as on other occasions, shown 
more zeal than taste or judgment. The honest 
citizens who marched under the orders of Sir 
Gibby, as he was facetiously called, probably knew 
better when to buy and when to sell stock than lo 
when to clap and when to hiss at a play, and 
incurred some ridicule by making the hypocritical 
Sempronius their favorite, and by giving to his 
insincere rants louder plaudits than they bestowed 
on the temperate eloquence of Cato. Wharton, 15 
too, who had the incredible effrontery to applaud 
the lines about flying from prosperous vice and 
from the power of impious men to a private station, 
did not escape the sarcasms of those who justly 
thought that he could fly from nothing more 20 
vicious or impious than himself. The epilogue, 
which was written by Garth, a zealous Whig, was 
severely and not unreasonably censured as ignoble 
and out of place. But Addison was described, 
even by the bitterest Tory writers, as a gentleman 35 
of wit and virtue, in whose friendship many per- 
sons of both parties were happy, and whose name 
ought not to be mixed up with factious squabbles. 
Of the jests by which the triumph of the Whig 
party was disturbed, the most severe and happy 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 133 

was Bolingbroke's. Between two acts he sent for 
Booth to his box, and presented him, before the 
whole theatre, with a purse of fifty guineas for 
defending the cause of liberty so well against a 

5 perpetual Dictator. This was a pungent allusion 
to the attempt which Marlborough had made, not 
long before his fall, to obtain a patent creating 
him Captain General for life. 

It was April; and in April, a hundred and 

10 thirty years ago, the London season was thought to 
be far advanced. During a whole month, how- 
ever, Oato was performed to overflowing houses, 
and brought into the treasury of the theatre twice 
the gains of an ordinary spring. In the summer 

15 the Drury Lane company went down to the Act at 
Oxford, and there, before an audience which 
retained an affectionate remembrance of Addison's 
accomplishments and virtues, his tragedy was 
enacted during several days. The gownsmen 

20 began to besiege the theatre in the forenoon, and 

by one in the afternoon all the seats were filled, 

\ \ ^- About the merits of the piece which had so 

extraordinary an effect, the public, we suppose, 

has made up its mind. To compare it with the 

25 masterpieces of the Attic stage, with the great 
English dramas of the time of Elizabeth, or even 
with the productions of Schiller's manhood, would 
be absurd indeed; yet it contains excellent dia- 
logue and declamation, and, among plays fashioned 

80 on the French model, must be allowed to rank 



134 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

high, — not indeed with Athalie or Sanl, but, we 
think, not below Oinna, and certainly above any- 
other English tragedy of the same school; above 
many of the plays of Corneille ; above many of the 
plays of Voltaire and Alfieri; and above some 5 
plays of Eacine. Be this as it may, we have little 
doubt that Oato did as much as the Tatlers^ Spec- 
tators^ and Freeholders united, to raise Addison's 
fame among his contemporaries. 
\ j<^ The modesty and good nature of the successful 10 
dramatist had tamed even the malignity of faction. 
But literary envy, it should seem, is a fiercer pas- 
sion than party spirit. It was by a zealous Whig 
that the fiercest attack on the Whig tragedy was 
made. John Dennis published Kemarks on Cato, 15 
which were written with some acuteness and with 
much coarseness and asperity. Addison neither 
defended himself nor retaliated. On many points 
he had an excellent defence, and nothing would 
have been easier than to retaliate ; for Dennis had 20 
written bad odes, bad tragedies, bad comedies : he 
had, moreover, a larger share than most men of 
those infirmities and eccentricities which excite 
laughter; and Addison's power of turning either 
an absurd book or an absurd man into ridicule was 25 
um-ivalled. Addison, however, serenely conscious 
of his superiority, looked with pity on his assail- 
ant, whose temper, naturally irritable and gloomy, 
had been soured by want, by controversy, and by 
literary failures. so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 135 

But among the young candidates for Addison's 
favor there was one distinguished by talents from 
the rest, and distinguished, we fear, not less by 
malignity and insincerity. Pope was only twenty- 

5 five. But his powers had expanded to their full 
maturity; and his best poem, the Eape of the 
Lock, had recently been published. Of his genius 
Addison had always expressed high admiration. 
But Addison had early discerned, what might, 

10 indeed, have been discerned by an eye less pene- 
trating thau his, that the diminutive, crooked, 
sickly boy was eager to revenge himself on society 
for the unkindness of nature. In the Spectator 
the Essay on Criticism had been praised with cor- 

15 dial warmth; but a gentle hint had been added 
that the writer of so excellent a poem would have 
done well to avoid ill-natured personalities. Pope, 
though evidently more galled by the censure than 
gratified by the praise, returned thanks for the 

20 admonition, and promised to profit by it. The 
two writers continued to exchange civilities, coun- 
sel, and small good ofl&ces. Addison publicly 
extolled Pope's miscellaneous pieces, and Pope 
furnished Addison with a prologue. This did not 

25 last long. Pope hated Dennis, whom he had 
injured without provocation. The appearance of 
the Eemarks on Oato gave the irritable poet an 
opportunity of venting his malice under the show 
of friendship ; and such an opportunity could not 

8© but be welcome to a nature which was implacable 



136 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

in enmity, and which always preferred the tortuous 
to the straight path. He published, accordingly, 
the Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis. But 
Pope had mistaken his powers. He was a great 
master of inyective and sarcasm; he could dissect 5 
a character in terse and sonorous couplets, brilliant 
Yfith antithesis; but of dramatic talent he was 
altogether destitute. If he had written a lampoon 
on Dennis, such as that on Atticus or that on 
Sporus, the old grumbler would have been crushed, lo 
But Pope writing dialogue resembled — to borrow 
Horace's imagery and his own — a wolf, which, 
instead of biting, should take to kicking, or a 
monkey which should try to sting. The Narrative 
is utterly contemptible. Of argument there is not is 
even the show, and the jests are such as, if they 
were introduced into a farce, would call forth the 
hisses of the shilling gallery. Dennis raves about 
the drama, and the nurse thinks that he is calling 
for a dram. ''There is," he cries, ''no peripetia 20 
in the tragedy, no change of fortune, no change at 
all." "Pray, good sir, be not angry," says the 
old woman, "I'll fetch change." This is not 
exactly the pleasantry of Addison. 
\ \ ^\ There can be no doubt that Addison saw through 23 
this officious zeal, and felt himself deeply aggrieved 
by it. So foolish and spiteful a pamphlet could do 
him no good, and, if he were thought to have any 
hand in it, must do him harm. Gifted with 
incomparable powers of ridicule, he had never, 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 137 

even in self-defence, used those powers inhumanly 
or uncourteously ; and he was not disposed to let 
others make his fame and his interests a pretext 
under which they might commit outrages from 

5 which he had himself constantly abstained. Ho 
accordingly declared that he had no concern in the 
Narrative, that he disapproved of it, and that if 
he answered the Eemarks, he would answer them 
like a gentleman ; and he took care to communi- 

10 cate this to Dennis. Pope was bitterly mortified, 

and to this transaction we are inclined to ascribe the 

hatred with which he ever after regarded Addison. 

In September, 1713, the Guardian ceased to 

appear. Steele had gone mad about politics. A 

15 general election had just taken place • he had been 
chosen member for Stockbridge, and he fully 
expected to play a first part in Parliament. The 
immense success of the Tatler and Spectator had 
turned his head. He had been the editor of both 

20 those papers, and was not aware how entirely they 
owed their influence and popularity to the genius 
of his friend. His spirits, alv^ays violent, were 
now excited by vanity, ambition, and faction, to 
such a pitch that he every day committed some 

25 offence against good sense and good taste. All the 
discreet and moderate members of his own party 
regretted and condemned his folly. ''I am in a 
thousand troubles," Addison wrote, ''about poor 
Dick, and wish that his zeal for the public may not 

80 be ruinous to himself. But he has sent me word 



138 MAC AULA Y'S ESSAYS 

that he is determined to go on, and that any advice 
I may give him in this particular will have no 
weight with him." 

Steele set up a political paper called the Eng- 
lisJiman^ which, as it was not supported by contri- 5 
butions from Addison, completely failed. By this 
work, by some other writings of the same kind, 
and by the ahs which he gave himself at the first 
meeting of the new Parliament, he made the Tories 
so angry that they determined to expel him. The lo 
Whigs stood by him gallantly, but were unable to 
save him. The vote of expulsion was regarded by 
all dispassionate men as a tyrannical exercise of the 
power of the majority. But Steele's violence and 
folly, though they by no means justified the steps 15 
which his enemies took, had completely disgusted 
his friends ; nor did he ever regain the place which 
he had held in the public estimation. 
\\\^ Addison about this time conceived the design of 
adding an eighth volume to the Spectator: In 20 
June, 1714, the first number of the new series 
appeared, and during about six months three 
papers were published weekly. Nothing can be 
more striking than the contrast between the Eng- 
lishman and the eighth volume of the Spectator ^ 35 
between Steele without Addison and Addison with- 
out Steele. The EnglisJiman is forgotten: the 
eighth volume of the Spectator contains, perhaps, 
the finest essays, both serious and playful, in the 
English language. 39 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 139 

Before this volume was completed, the death of 
Anne produced an entire change in the administra- 
tion of public affairs. The blow fell suddenly. 
It found the Tory party distracted by internal 

5 feuds, and unprepared for any great effort. 
Harley had just been disgraced. Bolingbroke, it 
was supposed, would be the chief minister. But 
the Queen was on her death-bed before the white 
staff had been given, and her last public act was to 

10 deliver it with a feeble hand to the Duke of 
Shrewsbury. The emergency produced a coalition 
between all sections of public men who were 
attached to the Protestant succession. George the 
First was proclaimed without opposition. A coun- 

15 cil, in which the leading whigs had seats, took the 
direction of affairs till the new King should arrive. 
The first act of the Lords Justices was to appoint 
Addison their secretary. 

^ I There is an idle tradition that he was directed 

20 to prepare a letter to the King, that he could not 
satisfy himself as to the style of this composition, 
and that the Lords Justices called in a clerk, who 
at once did what was wanted. It is not strange 
that a story so flattering to mediocrity should be 

25 popular; and we are sorry to deprive dunces of 
their consolation. But the truth must be told. 
It was well observed by Sir James Mackintosh, 
whose knowledge of these times was unequalled, 
that Addison never, in any official document, 

30 affected wit or eloquence, and that his despatches 



140 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

are, without exception, remarkable for unpretend- 
ing simplicity. Everybody who knows with what 
ease Addison's finest essays were produced, must 
be convinced that, if well-turned phrases had been 
wanted, he would have had no difficulty in finding 5 
them. We are, however, inclined to believe, that 
the story is not absolutely without a foundation. 
It may well be that Addison did not know, till he 
had consulted experienced clerks who remembered 
the times when William the Third was absent on lo 
the Continent, in what form a letter from the 
Council of Eegency to the King ought to be drawn. 
We think it very likely that the ablest statesmen of 
our time. Lord John Eussell, Sir Eobert Peel, 
Lord Palmerston, for example, would, in similar i5 
circumstances, be found quite as ignorant. Every 
office has some little mysteries which the dullest 
man may learn with a little attention, and which 
the greatest man cannot possibly know by intui- 
tion. One paper must be signed by the chief of 20 
the department ; another by his deputy ; to a third 
the royal sign-manual is necessary. One commu- 
nication is to be registered, and another is not. 
One sentence must be in black ink, and another 
in red ink. If the ablest Secretary for Ireland 25 
were moved to the India Board, if the ablest 
President of the India Board were moved to the 
War Office, he would require instruction on 
points like these; and we do not doubt that 
Addison required such instruction when he be- so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 141 

came, for the first time, Secretary to the Lords 
Justices. 

If George the First took possession of his kingdom 
without opposition. A new ministry was formed, 

5 and a new Parliament favorable to the Whigs 
chosen. Sunderland was appointed Lord Lieuten- 
ant of Ireland ; and Addison again went to Dublin 
as Chief Secretary. 

\ ^ At Dublin Swift resided ; and there was much 

10 speculation about the way in which the Dean and 
the Secretary would behave towards each other. 
The relations which existed between these remark- 
able men form an interesting and pleasing portion 
of literary history. They had early attached them- 

15 selves to the same political party and to the same 
patrons. While Anne's Whig ministry was in 
power, the visits of Swift to London and the 
official residence of Addison in Ireland had given 
them opportunities of knowing each other. They 

20 were the two shrewdest observers of their age. But 
their observations on each other had led them to 
favorable conclusions. Swift did full justice to 
the rare powers of conversation which were latent 
under the bashful deportment of Addison. Addi- 

25 son, on the other hand, discerned much good 
nature under the severe look and manner of Swift ; 
and, indeed, the Swift of 1708 and the Swift of 
1738 were two very different men. 
> But the paths of the two friends diverged 

30 widely. The Whig statesmen loaded Addison 



142 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

with solid benefits. They praised Swift, asked 
him to dinner, and did nothing more for him. 
His profession laid them under a difficulty. In 
the state they could not promote him; and they 
had reason to fear that, by bestowing preferment 5 
in the church on the author of the Tale of a Tub, 
they might give scandal to the public, which had 
no high opinion of their orthodoxy. He did not 
make fair allowance for the difficulties which pre- 
vented Halifax and Somers from serving him, lo 
thought himself an ill-used man, sacrificed honor 
and consistency to revenge, joined the Tories, and 
became their most formidable champion. He 
soon found, however, that his old friends were 
less to blame than he had supposed. The dislike i5 
with which the Queen and the heads of the church 
regarded him was insurmountable ; and it was with 
the greatest difficulty that he obtained an ecclesias- 
tical dignity of no great value, on condition of 
fixing his residence in a country which he de- 20 
tested. 
\q^ \ Difference of political opinion had produced, not 
indeed a quarrel, but a coolness between Swift and 
Addison. They at length ceased altogether to see 
each other. Yet there was between them a tacit 25 
compact like that between the hereditary guests in 
the Iliad : — 

'Eyx€a 5' aWiqKuiv aAecSjaeda koX 8l* 8ixC\ov 

IIoAAol ixev yap e/xol Tpwe? icAeiTOi t' itriKOvpoi,, 

Kretvctv, 6v Ke Oeogye nopt) /cat Troaal Ki,\€Cto, 30 

HoAAol 5' av <ro\ 'Axaiol, evaipifiev bv k€ Svviyat. 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 143 

It is not strange that Addison, who calumniated 
and insulted nobody, should not have calumniated 
or insulted Swift. But it is remarkable that 
Swift, to whom neither genius nor virtue was 

5 sacred, and who generally seemed to find, like most 

other renegades, a peculiar pleasure in attacking 

old friends, should have shown so much respect 

and tenderness to Addison. 

X "^ Fortune had now changed. The accession of 

10 the house of Hanover had secured in England the 
liberties of the people, and in Ireland the dominion 
of the Protestant caste. To that caste Swift was 
more odious than axiy other man. He was hooted 
and even pelted in the streets of Dublin; and 

15 could not venture to ride along the strand for his 
health without the attendance of armed servants. 
Many whom he had formerly served now libelled 
and insulted him. At this time Addison arrived. 
He had been advised not to show the smallest civil - 

20 ity to the Dean of St. Patrick's. He had an- 
swered, with admirable spirit, that it might be 
necessary for men whose fidelity to their party was 
suspected, to hold no intercourse with political 
opponents; but that one who had been a steady 

25 Whig in the worst times might venture, when the 
good cause was triumphant, to shake hands with 
an old friend who was one of the vanquished Tories. 
His kindness was soothing to the proud and cruelly 
wounded spirit of Swift ; and the two great satirists 

30 resumed their habits of friendly intercourse. 



144 M AC AULAY'S ESSAYS 

Those associates of Addison whose political 
opinions agreed with his shared his good fortune. 
He took Tickell with him to Ireland. He pro- 
cured for Budgell a lucrative place in the same 
kingdom. Ambrose Philips was provided for in 5 
England. Steele had injured himself so much by 
his eccentricity and perverseness,'that he obtained 
but a very small part of what he thought his due. 
He was, however, knighted; he had a place in the 
household; and he subsequently received other lo 
marks of favor from the court. 

Addison did not remain long in Ireland. In 
1715 he quitted his secretaryship for a seat at the 
Board of Trade. In the same year his comedy of 
the Drummer was brought on the stage. The is 
name of the author was not announced ; the piece 
was coldly received; and some critics have ex- 
pressed a doubt whether it were really Addison's. 
To us the evidence, both external and internal, 
seems decisive. It is not in Addison's best man- so 
ner ; but it contains numerous passages which no 
other writer known to us could have produced. It 
was again performed after Addison's death, and, 
being known to be his, was loudly applauded. 
'^M Towards the close of the year 1715, while the 25 
Eebellion was still raging in Scotland, Addison 
published the first number of a paper called the 
^ Freeholder. Among his political works the Free- 
holder is entitled to the first place. Even in the 
Spectator there are few serious papers nobler than so 



\ 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 145 

tlie character of his friend Lord Somers, and cer- 
tainly no satirical papers superior to those in which 
the Tory fox-hunter is introduced. This charac- 
ter is the original of Squire Western, and is drawn 

5 with all Fielding's force, and with a delicacy of 
which Fielding was altogether destitute. As none 
of Addison's works exhibits stronger marks of his 
genius than the Freeholder^ so none does more 
honor to his moral character. It is difficult to 

10 extol too highly the candor and humanity of a 
political writer whom even the excitement of ciyil 
war cannot hurry into unseemly violence. Oxford, 
it is well known, was then the stronghold of Tory- 
ism. The High Street had been repeatedly lined 

15 with bayonets in order to keep down the disaffected 
gownsmen; and traitors pursued by the messen- 
gers of the government had been concealed in the 
garrets of several colleges. Yet the admonition 
which, even under such circumstances, Addison 

20 addressed to the university, is singularly gentle, 
respectful, and even affectionate. Indeed, he 
could not find it in his heart to deal harshly even 
with imaginary persons. His fox-hunter, though 
ignorant, stupid, and violent, is at heart a good 

25 fellow, and is at last reclaimed by the clemency of 
the king. Steele was dissatisfied with his friend's 
moderation, and, though he acknowledged that the 
Freeholder was excellently written, complained 
that the ministry played on a lute when it was 

80 necessary to blow the trumpet. He accordingly 



146 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

determined to execute a flourish after his own 
fashion, and tried to rouse the public spirit of the 
nation by means of a paper called the Town Talh^ 
which is now as utterly forgotten as his English' 
man, as his Crisis, as his Letter to the Bailiff of 5 
Stockbridge, as his Eeader, in short, as everything 
that he wrote without the help of Addison. 

\%^ In the same year in which the Drummer was 
acted, and in which the first numbers of the Free- 
holder appeared, the estrangement of Pope and 10 
Addison became complete. Addison had from the 
first seen that Pope was false and malevolent. 
Pope had discovered that Addison was jealous. 
The discovery was made in a strange manner. 
Pope had written the Rape of the Lock, in two 15 
cantos, without supernatural machinery. These 
two cantos had been loudly applauded, and by 
none more loudly than by Addison. Then Pope 
thought of the Sylphs and Gnomes, Ariel, Momen- 
tilla, Crispissa, and Umbriel, and resolved to inter- 30 
weave the Eosicrucian mythology with the original 
fabric. He asked Addison's advice. Addison said 
that the poem as it stood was a delicious little 
thing, and entreated Pope not to run the risk of 
marring what was so excellent in trying to mend 25 
it. Pope afterward declared that this insidious 
counsel first opened his eyes to the baseness of him 
who gave it. 

\ '1 V K"ow there can be no doubt that Pope's plan was 
most ingenious, and that he afterwards executed it so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 147 

with great skill and success. But does it neces- 
sarily follow that Addison's advice was bad? And 
if Addison's advice was bad, does it necessarily 
follow that it was given from bad motives? If a 

5 friend were to ask ns whether we would advise him 
to risk his all in a lottery of which the chances 
were ten to one against him, we should do our 
best to dissuade him from running such a risk. 
Even if he were so lucky as to get the thirty thou- 

10 sand pound prize, we should not admit that we had 
counselled him ill ; and we should certainly think 
it the height of injustice in him to accuse us of 
having been actuated by malice. We think Addi- 
son's advice good advice. It rested on a sound 

15 principle, the result of long and wide experience. 
The general rule undoubtedly is that, when a suc- 
cessful work of imagination has been produced, it 
should not be recast. We cannot at this moment 
call to mind a single instance in which this rule 

20 has been transgressed with happy effect, except the 
instance of the Eape of the Lock. Tasso recast 
his Jerusalem. Akenside recast his Pleasures of 
the Imagination, and his Epistle to Curio. Pope 
himself, emboldened no doubt by the success with 

25 which he had expanded and remodelled the Eape 
of the Lock, made the same experiment on the 
Dunciad. All these attempts failed. Who was to 
foresee that Pope would, once in his life, be able 
to do what he could not himself do twice, and what 

30 nobody else has ever done? 



148 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Addison's advice was good. But had it been 
bad, why should we pronounce it dishonest? Scott 
tells us that one of his best friends predicted the 
failure of Waverley. Herder adjured Goethe not 
to take so unpromising a subject as Faust. Hume £ 
tried to dissuade Eobertson from writing the His- 
tory of Charles the Fifth. Nay, Pope himself was 
one of those who prophesied that Cato would 
never succeed on the stage, and advised Addison 
to print it without risking a representation. But i( 
Scott, Goethe, Eobertson, Addison, had the good 
sense and generosity to give their advisers credit 
for the best intentions. Pope's heart was not of 
the same kind with theii's. 

^1^^ In 1715, while he was engaged in translating the n 
Iliad, he met Addison at a coffee-house. Philips 
and Budgell were there; but their sovereign got 
rid of them, and asked Pope to dine with him 
alone. After dinner, Addison said that he lay 
under a difficulty which he wished to explain. 2( 
"Tickell," he said, 'translated some time ago the 
first book of the Iliad. I have promised to look it 
over and correct it. I cannot, therefore, ask to 
see yours, for that would be double-dealing." 
Pope made a civil reply, and begged that his 2i 
second book might have the advantage of Addi- 
son's revision. Addison readily agreed, looked 
over the second book, and sent it back with warm 
commendations. 

\%H Tickell's version of the first book appeared soon a 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 149 

after this conversation. In the preface, all rivalry 
was earnestly disclaimed. Tickell declared, that he 
should not go on with the Iliad. That enterprise 
he should leave to powers which he admitted to be 

5 superior to his own. His only view, he said, in 
publishing this specimen was to bespeak the favor 
of the public to a translation of the Odyssey, in 
which he had made some progress. 

"% ♦ Addison, and Addison's devoted followers, pro- 

10 nounced both the versions good, but maintained 
that Tickell's had more of the original. The 
town gave a decided preference to Pope's. We do 
not think it worth while to settle such a question 
of precedence. Neither of the rivals can be said 

15 to have translated the Iliad, unless indeed, the 
word translation be used in the sense which it 
bears in the Midsummer Night's Dream. When 
Bottom makes his appearance with an ass's head 
instead of his own, Peter Quince exclaims, ''Bless 

20 thee! Bottom, bless thee! thou art translated." 
In this sense, undoubtedly, the readers of either 
Pope or Tickell may very properly exclaim, ''Bless 
thee! Homer; thou art translated indeed." 

^ i Our readers will, we hope, agree with us in 

25 thinking that no man in Addison's situation could 
have acted more fairly and kindly, both towards 
Pope, and towards Tickell, than he appears to 
have done. But an odious suspicion had sprung 
up in the mind of Pope. He fancied, and he 

80 soon firmly believed, that there was a deep con- 



150 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

spiracy against his fame and his fortunes. The 
work on which he had staked his reputation was 
to be depreciated. The subscription, on which 
rested his hopes of a competence, was to be 
defeated. With this view Addison had made a 
rival translation : Tickell had consented to father 
it; and the wits of Button's had united to puff it. 
Is there any external evidence to support this 
grave accusation? The answer is short. There is 
absolutely none. 
\^% Was there any internal evidence which proved 
Addison to be the author of this version? Was it 
a work which Tickell was incapable of producing? 
Surely not. Tickell was a fellow of a college at 
Oxford, and must be supposed to have been able to 
construe the Iliad ; and he was a better versifier 
than his friend. We are not aware that Pope pre- 
tended to have discovered any turns of expression 
peculiar to Addison. Had such turns of ex- 
pression been discovered, they would be suflBciently 20 
accounted for by supposing Addison to have cor- 
rected his friend's lines, as he owned that he had 
done. 
^^ Is there anything in the character of the accused 
' persons which makes the accusation probable? We 
answer confidently — nothing. Tickell was long 
after this time described by Pope himself as a very 
fair and worthy man. Addison had been, during 
many years, before the public. Liter ai\y rivals, 
political opponents, had kept then- eyes on him. aa 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 151 

But neither envy nor faction, in their utmost 
rage, had ever imputed to him a single deviation 
from the laws of honor and of social morality. \ 
Had he been indeed a man meanly jealous of pj- 
5 fame, and capable of stooping to base and 
wicked arts for the purpose of injuring his com- 
petitors, would his vices have remained latent 
so long? He was a writer of tragedy: had he 
ever injured Eowe? He was a writer of com- 

10 edy: had he not done ample justice to Congreve, 
and given valuable help to Steele? He was a 
pamphleteer : have not his good nature and gener- 
osity been acknowledged by Swift, his rival in 
fame and his adversary in politics? 

I5w That Tickell should have been guilty of a villany 

> seems to us highly improbable. That Addison 
should have been guilty of a villany seems to us 
highly improbable. But that these two men 
should have conspired together to commit a villany 

20 seems to us improbable in a tenfold degree. All 
that is known to us of their intercourse tends to 
prove, that it was not the intercourse of two 
accomplices in crime. These are some of the lines 
in which Tickell poured forth his sorrow over the 

25 coffin of Addison : — 

L / *<0|. (jost thou warn poor mortals left behind, 
A task well suited to thy gentle mind ? 
Oh, if sometimes thy spotless form descend. 
To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend, 

30 When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms, 



152 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms. 

In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart, 

And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart ; 

Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before, 

Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more." 5 

In what words, we should like to know, did this 
guardian genius invite his pupil to join in a plan 
such as the editor of the Satirist would hardly 
dare to propose to the editor of the Age? 
^7(^ We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation lo 
which he knew to be false. We have not the 
smallest doubt that he believed it to be true; and 
the evidence on which he believed it he found 
in his own bad heart. His own life was one long 
series of tricks, as mean and as malicious as that of is 
which he suspected Addison and Tickell. He was 
all stiletto and mask. To injure, to insult, and to 
save himself from the consequences of injury and 
insult by lying and equivocating, was the habit of 
his life. He published a lampoon on the Duke of so 
Chandos; he was taxed with it; and he lied and 
equivocated. He published a lampoon on Aaron 
Hill; he was taxed with it; and he lied and 
equivocated. He published a still fouler lampoon 
on Lady Mary Wortley Montague; he was taxed 25 
with it; and he lied with more than usual effront- 
ery and vehemence. He puffed himself and 
abused his enemies under feigned names. He 
robbed himself of his own letters, and then raised 
the hue and cry after them. Besides his frauds of 9d 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 153 

malignity, of fear, of interest, and of vanity, there 
were frauds which he seems to have committed 
from love of fraud alone. He had a habit of 
stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who came 

5 near him. Whatever his objact might be, the 
indirect road to it was that which he preferred. 
For Bolingbroke, Pope undoubtedly felt as much 
love and veneration as it was in his nature to feel 
for any human being. Yet Pope was scarcely dead 

10 when it was discovered that, from no motive except 
the mere love of artifice, he had been guilty of an 
act of gross perfidy to Bolingbroke. 

\ ^ ''"{ Nothing was more natural than that such a man 
as this should attribute to others that which he 

15 felt within himself. A plain, probable, coherent 
explanation is frankly given to him. He is certain 
that it is all a romance. A line of conduct 
scrupulously fair, and even friendly, is pursued 
towards him. He is convinced that it is merely a 

20 cover for a vile intrigue by which he is to be dis- 
graced and ruined. It is vain to ask him for 
proofs. He has none, and wants none, except 
those which he carries in his own bosom. 
\'^% Whether Pope's malignity at length provoked 

25 Addison to retaliate for the first and last time, 
cannot now be known with certainty. We have 
only Pope's story, which runs thus. A pamphlet 
appeared containing some reflections which stung 
Pope to the quick. What those reflections were, 

80 and whether they were reflections of which he had 



154 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

a right to complain, we have now no means of 
deciding The Earl of Warwick, a foolish and 
vicious lad, who regarded Addison with the feel- 
ings with which such lads generally regard their 
best friends, told Pope, truly or falsely, that this s 
pamphlet had been written by Addison's direction. 
When we consider what a tendency stories have to 
grow, in passing even from one honest man to 
another honest man, and when we consider that to 
the name of honest man neither Pope nor the Earl lo 
of Warwick had a claim, we are not disposed to 
attach much importance to this anecdote. 
\ It is certain, however, that Pope was furious. 
He had already sketched the character of Atticus 
in prose. In his anger he turned this prose into is 
the brilliant and energetic lines which everybody 
. knows by heart, or ought to know by heart, and 
sent them to Addison. One charge which Pope 
has enforced with great skill is probably not with- 
out foundation. Addison was, we are inclined to 20 
believe, too fond of presiding over a circle of 
humble friends. Of the other imputations which 
these famous lines are intended to convey, scarcely 
one has ever been proved to be just, and some are 
certainly false. That Addison was not in the 25 
habit of '^danfining with faint praise" appears 
from innumerable passages in his writings, and 
from none more than from those in which he 
mentions Pope. And it is not merely unjust, but 
ridiculous, to describe a man who made the fortune so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 155 

of almost every one of his intimate friends, as '^so 
obliging that he ne'er obliged." 
^ji(C' That Addison felt the sting of Pope's satire 
keenly, we cannot doubt. That he was conscious 

5 of one of the weaknesses with which he was re- 
proached is highly probable. But his heart, we 
firmly believe, acquitted him of the gravest part of 
the accusation. He acted like himself. As a 
satirist he was, at his own weapons, more than 

10 Pope's match, and he would have been at no loss 
for topics. A distorted and diseased body, 
tenanted by a yet more distorted and diseased 
mind; spite and envy thinly disguised by senti- 
ments as benevolent and noble as those which Sir 

15 Peter Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Surface; a 
feeble, sickly licentiousness; an odious love of 
filthy and noisome images; these were things 
which a genius less powerful than that to which 
we owe the Spectator could easily have held up to 

20 the mirth and hatred of mankind. Addison had, 
moreover, at his command, other means of venge- 
ance which a bad man would not have scrupled 
to use. He was powerful in the state. Pope was 
a Catholic; and, in those times, a minister would 

25 have found it easy to harass the most innocent 
Catholic by innumerable petty vexations. Pope, 
near twenty years later, said that "through the 
lenity of the government alone he could live with 
comfort. '' ''Consider," he exclaimed, "the injury 

80 that a man of high rank and credit may do to a 



156 MACAULAY^S ESSAYS 

private person, under penal laws and many other 
disadvantages." It is pleasing to reflect that the 
only revenge which Addison took was to insert in 
the Freeholder a warm encomium on the transla- 
tion of the Iliad, and to exhort all lovers of learn- 5 
ing to put down their names as subscribers. 
There could be no doubt, he said, from the speci- 
mens already published, that the masterly hand of 
Pope would do as much for Homer as Dryden had 
done for Virgil. From that time to the end of his lo 
life, he always treated Pope, by Pope's own 
acknowledgment, with justice. Friendship was, 
of course, at an end. 
^v\\ One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick 
to play the ignominious part of talebearer on this is 
occasion, may have been his dislike of the mar- 
riage which was about to take place between his 
mother and Addison. The Countess Dowager, a 
daughter of the old and honorable family of the 
Middletons of Chirk, a family which, in any so 
country but ours, would be called noble, resided at 
Holland House. Addison had, during some years, 
occupied at Chelsea a small dwelling, once the 
abode of Nell Gwynn. Chelsea is now a district of 
London, and Holland House may be called a town 25 
residence. But, in the days of Anne and George 
the First, milkmaids and sportsmen wandered 
between green hedges, and over fields bright with 
daisies, from Kensington almost to the shore of the 
Thames. Addison and Lady Warwick were coon- so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 157 

try neighbors, and became intimate friends. The 
great wit and scholar tried to allure the young 
lord from the fashionable amusements of beating 
watchmen, breaking windows, and rolling women 
5 in hogsheads down Holborn Hill, to the study of 
letters and the practice of virtue. These well- 
meant exertions did little good, however, either to 
the disciple or to the master. Lord Warwick 
grew up a rake; and Addison fell in love. The 
10 mature beauty of the countess has been celebrated 
by poets in language which, after a very large 
allowance has been made for flattery, would lead us 
to believe that she was a fine woman ; and her rank 
doubtless heightened her attractions. The court- 
is ship was long. The hopes of the lover appear to 
have risen and fallen with the fortunes of his 
party. His attachment was at length matter of 
such notoriety that, when he visited Ireland for the 
last time, Eowe addressed some consolatory verses 
20 to the Chloe of Holland House. It strikes us as a 
little strange that, in these verses, Addison should 
be called Lycidas, a name of singularly evil omen 
for a swain just about to cross St. George's 
Channel. 
25^ At length Chloe capitulated. Addison was 
^H indeed able to treat with her on equal terms. He 
had reason to expect preferment even higher than 
that which he had attained. He had inherited 
the fortune of a brother who died Governor of 
30 Madras. He had purchased an estate in Warwick- 



158 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

shire, and had been welcomed to his domain in 
very tolerable verse by one of the neighboring 
squires, the poetical fox-hunter, William Somer- 
ville. In August, 1716, the newspapers announced 
that Joseph Addison, Esquire, famous for many 5 
excellent works, both in verse and prose, had 
espoused the Countess Dowager of Warwick. 
Y^l ^'} He now fixed his abode at Holland House, a 
house which can boast of a greater number of 
inmates distinguished in political and literary his- 10 
tory than any other private dwelling in England. 
His portrait still hangs there. The features are 
pleasing; the complexion is remarkably fair; but 
in the expression we trace rather the gentleness of 
his disposition than the force and keenness of his 15 
intellect. 
\^\*'NNot long after his marriage he reached the 
height of civil greatness. The Whig Government 
had, during some time, been torn by internal dis- 
sensions. Lord Townshend led one section of the 20 
Cabinet, Lord Sunderland the other. At length, 
in the spring of 1717, Sunderland triumphed. 
Townshend retired from office, and was accom- 
panied by Walpole and Cowper. Sunderland pro- 
ceeded to reconstruct the Ministry; and Addison 25 
was appointed Secretary of State. It is certain that 
the Seals were pressed upon him, and were at first 
declined by him. Men equally versed in official 
business might easily have been found; and his 
colleagues knew that they could not expect assist- 80 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 159 

ance from him in debate. He owed his elevation 
to his popularity, to his stainless probity, and to 
his literary fame. 

But scarcely had Addison entered the Cabinet 

5 when his health began to fail. From one serious 
attack he recovered in the autumn; and his 
recovery was celebrated in Latin verses, worthy of 
his own pen, by Vincent Bom^ne, who was then at 
Trinity College, Cambridge. A relapse soon took 

10 place; and, in the following spring, Addison was 
prevented by a severe asthma from discharging the 
duties of his post. He resigned it, and was suc- 
ceeded by his friend Craggs, a young man whose 
natural parts, though little improved by cultiva- 

15 tion, were quick and showy, whose graceful person 
and winning manners had made him generally 
acceptable in society, and who, if he had lived, 
would probably have been the most formidable of 
all the rivals of Walpole. 

20 As yet there was no Joseph Hume. The minis- 
ters, therefore, were able to bestow on Addison a 
retiring pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year. 
In what form this pension was given we are not 
told by the biographers, and have not time to 

25 inquire. But it is certain that Addison did not 
vacate his seat in the House of Commons. 

Rest of mind and body seemed to have reestab- 
lished his health; and he thanked God, with 
cheerful piety, for having set him free both from 

30 his office and from his asthma. Many years 



160 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

seemed to be before him, and he meditated many 
works, a tragedy on the death of Socrates, a trans- 
lation of the Psalms, a treatise on the evidences of 
Christianity. Of this last performance, a part, 
which we could well spare, has come down to us. 5 

But the fatal complaint soon returned, and 
gi-adually prevailed against all the resources of 
medicine. It is melancholy to think that the last 
months of such a life should have been overclouded 
both by domestic and by political vexations. A lo 
tradition which began early, which has been gener- 
ally received, and to which we have nothing to 
oppose, has represented his wife as an arrogant 
and imperious woman. It is said that, till his 
health failed him, he was glad to escape from the is 
Countess Dowager and her magnificent dining- 
room, blazing with the gilded devices of the house 
of Eich, to some tavern where he could enjoy a 
laugh, a talk about Virgil and Boileau, and a 
bottle of claret with the friends of his happier 20 
days. All those friends, however, were not left to 
him. Sir Kichard Steele had been gradually 
estranged by various causes. He considered him- 
self as one who, in evil times, had braved martyr- 
dom for his political principles, and demanded, 25 
when the Whig party was triumphant, a large 
compensation for what he had suffered when it was 
militant. The Whig leaders took a very different 
view of his claims. They thought that he had, by 
his own petulance and folly, brought them as well so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 161 

as himself into trouble, and thongh they did not 
absolutely neglect him, doled out favors to him 
with a sparing hand. It was natural that he 
should be angry with them, and especially angry 

5 with Addison. But what above all seems to have 
disturbed Sir Eichard, was the elevation of Tickell, 
who, at thirty, was made by Addison Undersecre- 
tary of State , while the editor of the Tatler and 
Spectator^ the author of the Crisis, the member 

10 for Stockbridge who had been persecuted for firm 
adherence to the house of Hanover, was, at near 
fifty, forced, after many solicitations and com- 
plaints, to content himself with a share in the pat- 
ent of Drury Lane Theatre. Steele himself says, in 

15 his celebrated letter to Congreve, that Addison, by 
his preference of Tickell, "incurred the warmest 
resentment of other gentlemen;" and everything 
seems to indicate that, of those resentful gentle- 
men, Steele was himself one. 

20 While poor Sir Eichard was brooding over what 
he considered as Addison's unkindness, a new 
cause of quarrel arose. The Whig party, already 
divided against itself, was rent by a nevf schism. 
The celebrated bill for limiting the number of peers 

25 had been brought in. The proud Duke of Somer- 
set, first in rank of all the nobles whose origin 
permitted them to sit in Parliament, was the 
ostensible author of the measure. But it was sup- 
ported, and, in truth, devised by the Prime 

30 Minister. 



162 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

We are satisfied that the bill was most perni- 
cious ; and we fear that the motives which induced 
Sunderland to frame it were not honorable to 
him. But we cannot deny that it was supported by- 
many of the best and wisest men of that age. 5 
Nor was this strange. The royal prerogative 
had, within the memory of the generation then 
in the vigor of life, been so grossly abused, 
that it was still regarded with a jealousy which, 
when the peculiar situation of the House of lo 
Brunswick is considered, may perhaps be called 
immoderate. The particular prerogative of creat- 
ing peers had, in the opinion of the Whigs, been 
gi'ossly abused by Queen Anne's last Ministry; and 
even the Tories admitted that her majesty in 15 
swamping, as it has since been called, the Upper 
House, had done what only an extreme case could 
justify. The theory of the English constitution, 
according to many high authorities, was that three 
independent powers, the sovereign, the nobility, 20 
and the commons, ought constantly to act as checks 
on each other. If this theory were sound, it 
seemed to follow that to put one of these powers 
under the absolute control of the other two was 
absurd. But if the number of peers were un- ss 
limited, it could not well be denied that the Upper 
House was under the absolute control of the Crown 
and the Commons, and was indebted only to their 
moderation for any power which it might be 
suffered to retain. so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 163 

Steele took part with the Opposition, Addison 
with the ministers. Steele, in a paper called the 
Plebeian^ vehemently attacked the bill. Sunder- 
land called for help on Addison, and Addison 

) obeyed the call. In a paper called the Old WMg^ 
he answered, and indeed refuted Steele's argu- 
ments. It seems to us that the premises of both 
the controversialists were unsound, that, on those 
premises, Addison reasoned well and Steele ill, and 

) that consequently Addison brought out a false 
conclusion, while Steele blundered upon the truth. 
In style, in wit, and in politeness, Addison main- 
tained his superiority, though the Old Whig is by 
no means one of his happiest performances. 

5 At first, both the anonymous opponents observed 
the laws of propriety. But at length Steele so far 
forgot himself as to tln'ow an odious imputation on 
the morals of the chiefs of the administration. 
Addison replied with severity, but, in our opinion, 

) v;ith less severity than was due to so grave an 
offence against morality and decorum ; nor did he, 
in his just anger, forget for a moment the laws of 
good taste and good breeding. One calumny which 
has been often repeated, and never yet contradicted, 

5 it is our duty to expose. It is asserted in the 
BiograpMa Britannica^ that Addison designated 
Steele as '^little Dicky." This assertion was 
repeated by Johnson, who had never seen the Old 
Whig^ and was therefore excusable. It has also 

been repeated by Miss Aikin, who has seen the Old 



164 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Whig^ and for whom therefore there is less excuse. 
Now, it is true that the words ' 'little Dicky" occur 
in the Old WMg^ and that Steele's name was 
Richard. It is equally true that the words ''little 
Isaac" occur in the Duenna, and that Newton's 5 
name was Isaac. But we confidently affirm that 
Addison's little Dicky had no more to do with 
Steele, than Sheridan's little Isaac with Newton 
If we apply the words "little Dicky" to Steele, we 
deprive a very lively and ingenious passage, not lo 
only of all its wit, but of all its meaning. Little 
Dicky was the nickname of Henry Norris, an 
actor of remarkably small stature, but of great 
humor, who played the usurer .Gomez, then a most 
popular part, in Dry den's Spanish Friar. is 

The merited reproof which Steele had received, 
though softened by some kind and courteous 
expressions, galled him bitterly. He replied with 
little force and great acrimony ; but no rejoinder 
appeared. Addison was fast hastening to his so 
grave; and had, we may well suppose, little dis- 
position to prosecute a quarrel with an old friend. 
His complaint had terminated in dropsy. He 
bore up long and manfully. But at length he 
abandoned all hope, dismissed his physicians, and 25 
calmly prepared himself to die. 

His works he intrusted to the care of Tickell, 
and dedicated them a very few days before his 
death to Craggs, in a letter written with the sweet 
and graceful eloquence of a Saturday's Spectator, \ 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 165 

In this, his last composition, he alluded to his 
approaching end in words so manly, so cheerful, 
and so tender, that it is difficult to read them 
without tears. At the same time he earnestly 

6 recommended the interests of Tickell to the care 
of Craggs. 

Within a few hours of the time at which this 
dedication was written, Addison sent to beg Gay, 
who was then living by his wits about town, to 

10 come to Holland House. Gay went, ^id was 
received with great kindness. To his amazement 
his forgiveness was implored by the dying man. 
Poor Gay, the most good-natured and simple of 
mankind, could not imagine what he had to for- 

15 give. There was, however, some wrong, the 
remembrance of which weighed on Addison's 
mind, and which he declared himself anxious to 
repair. Ho was in a state of extreme exhau^ion ; 
and the parting was doubtless a friendly one on 

20 both sides. Gay supposed that some plan to 
serve him had been in agitation at Court, and had 
been frustrated by Addison's influence. Nor is 
this improbable. Gay had paid assiduous court 
to the royal family. But in the Queen's days he 

25 had been the, eulogist of ^olingbroke, and was still 
connected with onaAy x5nes. It is not strahge 
that Addison, while heated by conflict, should 
have thought himself Justified in obstructing the 
preferment of one whom he might regard as a 

30 political enemy. Neither is it strange that, when 



166 MAC AULA Y'S ESSAYS 

reviewing his whole life, and earnestly scrutinizing 
all his motives, he should think that he had acted 
an unkind and ungenerous part, in using his 
power against a distressed man of letters, who was 
as harmless and as helpless as a child. 5 

One inference may be drawn from this anecdote. 
It appears that Addison, on his death-bed, called 
himself to a strict account, and was not at ease till 
he had asked pardon for an injury which it was 
not even suspected that he had committed, for an lo 
injury which would have caused disquiet only to a 
very tender conscience. Is it not then reasonable 
to infer that, if he had really been guilty of form- 
ing a base conspiracy against the fame and fortunes 
of a rival, he would have expressed some remorse is 
for so serious a crime? But it is unnecessary to 
multiply arguments and evidence for the defence, 
when there is neither argument nor evidence for 
the accusation. 

The last moments of Addison were perfectly 20 
serene. His interview with his son-in-law is uni- 
versally known. '^See," he said, "how a Chris- 
tian can die." The piety of Addison was, in 
truth, of a singularly cheerful character. The 
feelmg which predominates in all his devotional 25 
v/ritings is gratitude. God was to him the allwise 
and allpowerful friend who had watched over his 
cradle with more than maternal tenderness; who 
had listened to his cries before they could form 
themiselves in prayer ; who had preserved his youth so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 167 

from the snares of vice ; who had made his cup 
run over with worldly blessings ; who had doubled 
the value of those blessings by bestowing a thank- 
ful heart to enjoy them, and dear friends to 

5 partake them; who had rebuked the waves of 
the Ligurian gulf, had purified the autumnal air 
of the Campagna, and had restrained the ava- 
lanches of Mont Cenis. Of the Psalms, his 
favorite was that which represents the Euler of all 

10 things under the endearing image of a shepherd, 
whose crook guides the fiock safe, through gloomy 
and desolate glens, to meadows well watered and 
rich with herbage. On that goodness to which he 
ascribed all the happiness of his life, he relied in 

15 the hour of death with the love that casteth out 
fear. He died on the seventeenth of June, 1719. 
He had just entered on his forty-eighth year. 

His body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, 
and was borne thence to the Abbey at dead of 

20 night. The choir sang a funeral hymn. Bishop 
Atterbury, one of those Tories who had loved and 
honored the most accomplished of the Whigs, met 
the corpse, and led the procession by torchlight, 
round the shrine of Saint Edward and the graves 

25 of the Plantagenets, to the Chapel of Henry the 
Seventh. On the north side of that chapel, in the 
vault of the house of Albemarle, the coffin of 
Addison lies next to the coffin of Montague. Yet 
a few months, and the same mourners passed again 

80 along the same aisle. The same sad anthem was 



168 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

again chanted. The same vanlt was again opened; 
and the coffin of Oraggs was placed close to the 
coffin of Addison. 

Many tributes were paid to the memory of Addi- 
son; but one alone is now remembered. Tickell 5 
bewailed his friend in an elegy which would do 
honor to the greatest name in our literature, and 
which unites the energy and magnificence of Dry- 
den to the tenderness and purity of Oowper. This 
fine poem was prefixed to a superb edition of Addi- lo 
son's works, which was published in 1721, by 
subscription. The names of the subscribers 
proved how widely his fame had been spread. 
That his countrymen should be eager to possess his 
writings, even in a costly form, is not wonderful, is 
But it is wonderful that, though English literature 
was then little studied on the continent, Spanish 
grandees, Italian prelates, marshals of France, 
should be found in the list. Among the most 
remarkable names are those of the Queen of 20 
Sweden, of Prince Eugene, of the Grand Duke of 
Tuscany, of the Dukes of Parma, Modena, and 
Guastalla, of the Doge of Genoa, of the Eegent 
Orleans, and of Cardinal Dubois. We ought to 
add that this edition, though eminently beautiful, 25 
is in some important points defective ; nor, indeed, 
do we yet possess a complete collection of Addi- 
son's writings. 

It is strange that neither his opulent and noble 
widow, nor any of his powerful and attached so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 169 

friends, should have thought of placing even a 
simple tablet, inscribed with his name, on the walls 
of the Abbey. It was not till three generations 
had laughed and wept over his pages, that the 
6 omission was supplied by the public veneration. 
At length, in our own time, his image, skilfully 
graven, appeared in Poet's Corner. It represents 
him, as we can conceive him, clad in his dressing- 
gown, and freed from his wig, stepping from his 

10 parlor at Chelsea into his trim little garden, with 
the account of the Everlasting Club, or the Loves 
of Hilpa and Shalum, just finished for the next 
day's Spectator^ in his hand. Such a mark of 
national respect was due to the unsullied states - 

15 man, to the accomplished scholar, to the master 
of pure English eloquence, to the consummate 
painter of life and manners. It was due, above all, 
to the great satirist, who alone knew how to use 
ridicule without abusing it, who, without inflicting 

20 a wound, effected a great social reform, and who 
reconciled wit and virtue, after a long and disas- 
trous separation, during which wit had been led 
astray by profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism. 



ir>i ^X,d^^£U^ 



THE 

LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHI^SO]^" 

1709-1784 

Samuel Johnson, one of the most eminent 
English writers of the eighteenth century, was 
the son of Michael Johnson, who was, at the 
beginning of that century, a magistrate of Lich- 
field, and a bookseller of great note in the mid- 5 
land counties. Michael's abilities and attain- 
ments seem to have been considerable. He was 
so well acquainted with the contents of the vol- 
umes which he exposed to sale, that the country 
rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire 10 
thought him an oracle on points of learning. 
Between him and the clergy, indeed, there was a 
strong religious and political sympathy. He was 
a zealous churchman, and, though he had qual- 
ified himself for municipal office by taking the 15 
oaths to the sovereigns in possession, was to the 
last a Jacobite in heart. At his house, a house 
which is still pointed out to every traveller who 
visits Lichfield, Samuel was born on the 18th of 
September, 1709. In the child, the physical, 20 
intellectual, and moral peculiarities which after- 
wards distinguished the man were plainly discern- 

170 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 171 

ible, — great muscular strength, accompanied by 
much awkwardness and many infirmities; great 
quickness of parts, with a morbid propensity to 
sloth and procrastination ; a kind and generous 

5 heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper. He 
had inherited from his ancestors a scrofulous 
taint, which it was beyond the power of medicine 
to remove. His parents were weak enough to 
believe that the royal touch was a specific for this 

10 malady. In his third year he was taken up to 
London, inspected by the court surgeon, prayed 
over by the court chaplains, and stroked and pre- 
sented with a piece of gold by Queen Anne. One 
of his earliest recoUectious was that of a stately 

15 lady in a diamond stomacher and a long black 
hood. Her hand was applied in vain. The 
boy's features, which were originally noble and 
not irregular, were distorted by his malady. His 
cheeks were deeply scarred. He lost for a time 

20 the sight of one eye ; and he saw but very imper- 
fectly with the other. But the force of his mind 
overcame every impediment. Indolent as he was, 
he acquired knowledge with such ease and rapid- 
ity that at every school to which he was sent he 

25 was soon the best scholar. Prom sixteen to 
eighteen he resided at home, and was left to his 
own devices. He learned much at this time, 
though his studies were without guidance and 
without plan. He ransacked his father's shelves, 

30 dipped into a multitude of books, read what was 



172 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

interesting, and passed over what was dull. An 
ordinary lad would have acquired little or no 
useful knowledge in such a way; but much that 
was dull to ordinary lads was interesting to 
Samuel. He read little Greek, for his proficiency 5 
in that language was not such that he could take 
much pleasure in the masters of Attic poetry and 
eloquence. But he had left school a good Latin- 
ist, and he soon acquired, in the large and miscel- 
laneous library of which he now had the com- lo 
mand, an extensive knowledge of Latin literature. 
That Augustan delicacy of taste, which is the 
boast of the great public schools of England, he 
never possessed. But he was early familiar with 
some classical writers, who were quite unknown 15 
to the best scholars in the sixth form at Eton. 
He was peculiarly attracted by the works of the 
great restorers of learning. Once, while search- 
ing for some apples, he found a huge folio volume 
of Petrarch's works. The name excited his 20 
curiosity, and he eagerly devoured hundreds of 
pages. Indeed, the diction and versification of 
his own Latin compositions show that he had 
paid at least as much attention to modern copies 
from the antique as to the original models. 25 

While he was thus irregularly educating him- 
self, his family was sinking into hopeless poverty. 
Old Michael Johnson was much better qualified 
to pore upon books, and to talk about them, than 
to trade in them. His business declined; his so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 173 

debts increased ; it was with difficulty that the 
daily expenses of his household were defrayed. 
It was out of his power to support his son at 
either university, but a wealthy neighbor offered 

5 assistance; and, in reliance on promises which 
proved to be of very little value, Samuel was 
entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the 
young scholar presented himself to the rulers of 
that society, they were amazed not more by his 

10 ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by 
the quantity of extensive and curious information 
which he had picked up during many months of 
desultory but not unprofitable study. On the 
first day of his residence, he surprised his teach- 

15 ei-s by quoting Macrobius ; and one of the most 
learned among them declared that he had never 
known a freshman of equal attainments. 

At Oxford, Johnson resided during about three 
years. He was poor, even to raggedness; and 

20 his appearance excited a mirth and a pity which 
were equally intolerable to his haughty spirit. 
He was driven from the quadrangle of Christ 
Church by the sneering looks which the members 
of that aristocratical society cast at the holes in 

25 his shoes. Some charitable person placed a new 
pair at his door ; but he spurned them away in a 
fury. Distress made him, not servile, but reck- 
less and ungovernable. No opulent gentleman 
commoner, panting for one-and-twenty, could 

30 have treated the academical authorities with more 



174 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

gross disrespect. The needy scholar was gener- 
ally to be seen under the gate of Pembroke, a 
gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing 
a circle of lads, over whom, in spite of his tat- 
tered go^Ti and dirty linen, his wit and audacity 5 
gave him an undisputed ascendency. In every 
mutiny against the discipline of the college he 
was the ringleader Much was pardoned, how- 
ever, to a youth so highly distinguished by abili- 
ties and acquirements. He had early made him- lo 
self known by turning Pope's ''Messiah" into 
Latin verse The style and rhythm, indeed, 
were not exactly Yirgilian; but the translation 
found many admirers, and was read with pleasure 
by Pope himself. is 

The time drew near at which Johnson would, 
in the ordinary course of things, have become a 
Bachelor of Arts ; but he was at the end of his 
resources. Those promises of support on which 
he had relied had not been kept. His family 20 
could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford 
tradesmen were small indeed, yet larger than he 
could pay. In the autumn of 1731 he was under 
the necessity of quitting the university without a 
degree. In the following winter his father died. 25 
The old man left but a pittance ; and of that pit- 
tance almost the whole was appropriated to the 
support of his widow. The property to which 
Samuel succeeded amounted to no more than 
twenty pounds. so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 175 

His life, during the thirty years which fol- 
lowed, was one hard struggle with poverty. The 
misery of that struggle needed no aggravation, 
but was aggravated by the sufferings of an 

5 unsound body and an unsound mind. Before the 
young man left the university, his hereditary 
malady had broken forth in a singularly cruel 
form. He had become an incurable hypochon- 
driac. He said long after that he had been mad 

10 all his life, or at least not perfectly sane; and, in 
truth, eccentricities less strange than his have 
often been thought grounds sufficient for absolv- 
ing felons, and for setting aside wills. His 
grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings, sometimes 

15 diverted and sometimes terrified people who did 
not know him. At a dinner-table he would, in a 
fit of absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady's 
shoe. He would amaze a drawing-room by sud- 
denly ejaculating a clause of the Lord's Prayer. 

20 He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a 
particular alley, and perform a great circuit 
rather than see the hateful place. He would set 
his heart on touching every post in the streets 
through which he walked. If by any chance he 

25 missed a post, he would go back a hundred 
yards and repair the omission. Under the influ- 
ence of his disease his senses became morbidly 
torpid, and his imagination morbidly active. At 
one time he would stand poring on the town clock 

30 without being able to tell the hour. At another, 



176 MACAULAY S ESSAYS 

he would distinctly hear his mother, who was many 
miles off, calling him by his name. But this was 
not the worst. A deep melancholy took posses- 
sion of him, and gave a dark tinge to all his 
views of human nature and of human destiny. 5 
Such wretchedness as he endured has driven many 
men to shoot themselves or drown themselves. 
But he was under no temptation to commit 
suicide. He was sick of life ; but he was afraid 
of death; and he shuddered at every sight or la 
sound which reminded him of the inevitable hour. 
In religion he found but little comfort during his 
long and frequent fits of dejection; for his religion 
partook of his own character. The light from 
heaven shone on him indeed, but not in a direct 15 
line, or with its own pure splendor. The rays 
had to struggle through a disturbing medium: 
they reached him refracted, dulled, and discolored 
by the thick gloom which had settled on his soul , 
and, though they might be sufiiciently clear to 20 
guide him, were too dim to cheer him. 

With such infirmities of body and of mind, this 
celebrated man was left, at two-and-twenty, to 
fight his way through the world. He remained 
during about five years in the midland counties. 25 
At Lichfield, his birthplace and his early home, 
he had inherited some friends, and acquired 
others. He was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, 
a gay officer of noble family, who happened to be 
quartered there. Gilbert Walmesley, registrar of so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 177 

the ecclesiastical court of the diocese, a man 
of distinguished parts, learning, and knowledge 
of the world, did himself honor by patronizing 
the young adventurer, whose repulsive person, 

5 unpolished manners, and squalid garb, moved 
many of the petty aristocracy of the neighbor- 
hood to laughter or to disgust. At Lichfield, 
however, Johnson could find no way of earning 
a livelihood. He became usher of a grammar 

10 school in Leicestershire ; he resided as a humble 
companion in the house of a country gentleman ; 
but a life of dependence was insupportable to his 
haughty spirit. He repaired to Birmingham, and 
there earned a few guineas by literary drudgery. 

15 In that town he printed a translation, little 
noticed at the time, and long forgotten, of a 
Latin book about Abyssinia. He then put forth 
proposals for publishing by subscription the poems 
of Politian, with notes containing a history of 

20 modern Latin verse; but subscriptions did not 
come in, and the volume never appeared. 

While leading this vagrant and miserable life, 
Johnson fell in love. The object of his passion 
was Mrs. Elizabeth Porter, a widow who had 

25 children as old as himself. To ordinary specta- 
tors, the lady appeared to be a short, fat, coarse 
woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in 
gaudy colors, and fond of exhibiting provincial 
airs and graces which were not exactly those of 

30 the Queensberrys and Lepels. To Johnson, 



178 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

however, whose passions were strong, whose eye- 
sight was too weak to distinguish ceruse from 
natural bloom, and who had seldom or never been 
in the same room with a woman of real fashion, 
his Titty, as he called her, was the most beauti- 5 
ful, graceful, and accomplished of her sex. That 
his admiration was unfeigned cannot be doubted; 
for she was as poor as himself. She accepted, 
with a readiness which did her little honor, the 
addresses of a suitor who might have been her 10 
son. The marriage, however, in spite of occa- 
sional wranglings, proved happier than might 
have been expected. The lover continued to be 
under the illusions of the wedding-day till the 
lady died in her sixty -fourth year. On her mon- is 
ument he placed an inscription extolling the 
charms of her person and of her manners ; and 
when, long after her decease, he had occasion to 
mention her, he exclaimed, with a tenderness half 
ludicrous, half pathetic, ''Pretty creature!" 20 

His marriage made it necessary for him to exert 
himself more strenuously than he had hitherto 
done. He took a house in the neighborhood of 
his native town, and advertised for pupils. But 
eighteen months passed away, and only three 25 
pupils came to his academy. Indeed, his appear- 
ance was so strange, and his temper so violent, 
that his schoolroom must have resembled an 
ogre's den. Nor was the tawdry, painted grand- 
mother whom he called his Titty, well qualified 30 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 179 

to make provision for the comfort of young gen- 
tlemen. David Garrick, who was one of the 
pupils, used many years later to throw the best 
company of London into convulsions of laughter 

5 by mimicking the endearments of this extraordi- 
nary pair. 

At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year 
of his age, determined to seek his fortune in the 
capital as a literary adventurer. He set out with 

10 a few guineas, three acts of the tragedy of 
"^^ Irene" in manuscript, and two or three letters 
of introduction from his friend Walmesley. 

Never since literature became a calling in Eng- 
land had it been a less gainful calling than at the 

15 time when Johnson took up his residence in 
London. In the preceding generation, a writer 
of eminent merit was sure to be munificently 
rewarded by the government. The least that he 
could expect was a pension or a sinecure place ; 

>o and, if he showed any aptitude for politics, he 
might hope to be a member of parliament, a lord 
of the treasury, an ambassador, a secretary of 
state. It would be easy, on the other hand, to 
name several writers of the nineteenth century of 

J5 whom the least successful has received forty thou- 
sand pounds from the booksellers. But Johnson 
entered on his vocation in the most dreary part of 
the dreary interval which separated two ages of 
prosperity. Literature had ceased to flourish 

w under the patronage of the great, and had not 



180 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

begun to flourish under the patronage of the 
public. One man of letters, indeed. Pope, had 
acquired by his pen what was then considered as 
a handsome fortune, and lived on a footing of 
equality with nobles and ministers of state. But 5 
this was a solitary exception. Even an author 
whose reputation was esta;blished, and whose 
works were popular; such an author as Thomson, 
whose ^'Seasons" were in every library; such an 
author as Fielding whose ''Pasquin" had had a lo 
greater run than any drama since the "Beggars' 
Opera," was sometimes glad to obtain, by pawn- 
ing his best coat, the means of dining on tripe at 
a cookshop underground, where he could wipe his 
hands, after his greasy meal, on the back of a is 
Newfoundland dog. It is easy, therefore, to 
imagine what humiliations and privations must 
have awaited the novice who had still to earn a 
name. One of the publishers to whom Johnson 
applied for employment, measured with a scorn- 20 
ful eye that athletic, though uncouth, frame, and 
exclaimed, "You had better get a porter's knot, 
and carry trunks." Xor was the advice bad; for 
a porter was likely to be as plentifully fed, and as 
comfortably lodged, as a poet. 25 

Some time appears to have elapsed before John- 
son was able to form any literary connection from 
which he could expect more than bread for the 
day which was passing over him. He never 
forgot the generosity with which Hervey, who so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 181 

was now residing in London, relieved his wants 
during his time of trial. ''Harry Hervey," said 
the old philosopher many years later, ''was a 
vicious man; but he was very kind to me. If 

5 you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him." At 
Hervey's table Johnson sometimes enjoyed feasts 
which were made more agreeable by contrast. But 
in general he dined, and thought that he dined 
well, on sixpennyworth of meat and a pennyworth 

10 of bread at an alehouse near Drury Lane. 

The effect of the privations and sufferings 
Avhich he endured at this time was discernible to 
the last in his temper and his deportment. His 
manners had never been courtly. They now 

15 became almost savage. Being frequently under 
the necessity of wearing shabby coats and dirty 
shirts, he became a confirmed sloven. Being 
often very hungry when he sat down to his meals, 
he contracted a habit of eating with ravenous 

20 greediness. Even to the end of his life, and even 
at the tables of the great, the sight of food 
affected him as it affects wild beasts and birds of 
prey. His taste in cookery, formed in subterra- 
nean ordinaries and a la mode beef shops, was far 

25 from delicate. Whenever~Tie was so fortunate as 
to have near him a hare that had been kept too 
long, or a meat-pie made with rancid butter, he 
gorged himself with such violence that his veins 
swelled, and the moisture broke out on his fore- 

30 head. The affronts which his poverty emboldened 



182 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

stupid and low-minded men to offer to him, would 
,have broken a mean spirit into sycophancy, but 
made him rude even to ferocity. Unhappily the 
insolence which, while it was defensive, was par- 
donable, and in some sense respectable, accom- 5 
panied him into societies where he was treated 
with courtesy and kindness. He was repeatedly 
provoked into striking those who had taken liber- 
ties with him. All the sufferers, however, were 
wise enough to abstain from talking about their 10 
beatings, except Osborne, the most rapacious and 
brutal of booksellers, who proclaimed everywhere 
that he had been knocked down by the huge fel- 
low whom he had hired to puff the Harleian 
Library. 15 

About a year after Johnson had begun to reside 
in London, he was fortunate enough to obtain 
regular employment from Cave, an enterprising 
and intelligent bookseller, who was proprietor 
and editor of the Gentleman^ s Magazine, That 20 
journal, just entering on the ninth year of its 
long existence, was the only periodical work in 
the kingdom which then had what would now be 
called a large circulation. It was, indeed, the 
chief source of parliamentary intelligence. It 25 
was not then safe, even during a recess, to pub- 
lish an account of the proceedings of either House 
without some disguise. Cave, however, ventured 
to entertain his readers with what he called 
Reports of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput. 30 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 183 

France was Blefuscu; London was Mildendo; 
pounds were sprugs; the Duke of Newcastle was 
the Nardac Secretary of State; Lord Hardwicke 
was the Hurgo Hickrad; and William Pulteney 

5 was Wingul Pulnub. To write the speeches was, 
during several years, the business of Johnson. 
He was generally furnished with notes, meagre, 
indeed, and inaccurate, of what had been said; 
but sometimes he had to find arguments and 

10 eloquence both for the ministry and for the oppo- 
sition. He was himself a Tory, not from rational 
conviction, — for his serious opinion was that one 
form of government was just as good or as bad as 
another, — but from mere passion, such as inflamed 

15 the Capulets against the Montagues, or the Blues 
of the Koman circus against the Greens. In his 
infancy he had heard so much talk about the vil- 
lanies of the Whigs, and the dangers of the 
Church, that he had become a furious partisan 

20 when he could scarcely speak. Before he was 
three he had insisted on being taken to hear 
Sacheverell preach at Lichfield Cathedral, and had 
listened to the sermon with as much respect, and 
probably with as much intelligence, as any 

25 Staffordshire squire in the congregation. The 
work which had been begun in the nursery had 
been completed by the university. Oxford, when 
Johnson resided there, was the most Jacobitical 
place in England; and Pembroke was one of the 

30 most Jacobitical colleges in Oxford. The preju- 



184 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

dices which he brought up to London were 
scarcely less absurd than those of his own ''Tom 
Tempest." Charles II. and James II. were two 
of the best kings that ever reigned. Laud, a 
poor creature who never did, said, or wrote any- 5 
thing indicating more than the ordinary capacity 
of an old woman, was a prodigy of parts and 
learning over whose tomb Art and Genius still 
continued to weep. Hampden deserved no more 
honorable name than that of "the zealot of rebel- lo 
lion." Even the ship money, condemned not less 
decidedly by Falkland and Clarendon than by the 
bitterest Koundheads, Johnson would not pro- 
nounce to have been an unconstitutional impost. 
Under a government the mildest that had ever i5 
been known in the world — under a government 
which allowed to the people an unprecedented 
liberty of speech and action, he fancied that he 
was a slave ; he assailed the ministry with obloquy 
which refuted itself, and regretted the lost free- 20 
dom and happiness of those golden days in which 
a writer who had taken but one-tenth part of the 
license allowed to him, would have been pilloried, 
mangled with the shears, whipped at the cart's 
tail, and flung into a noisome dungeon to die. 25 
He hated dissenters and stock-jobbers, the excise 
and the army, septennial parliaments, and conti- 
nental connections. He long had an aversion to 
the Scotch, an aversion of which he could not 
remember the commencement, but which^ he 30 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 185 

owned, had probably originated in his abhorrence 
of the conduct of the nation during the Great 
Eebellion. It is easy to guess in what manner 
debates on great party questions were likely to be 

5 reported by a man whose judgment was so much 
disordered by party spirit. A show of fairness 
was indeed necessary to the prosperity of the 
Magazine. But Johnson long afterwards owned 
that, though he had saved appearances, he had 

10 taken care that the Whig dogs should not have 
the best of it ; and, in fact, every passage which 
has lived, every passage which bears the marks of 
his higher faculties, is put into the mouth of some 
member of the opposition. 

15 A few weeks after Johnson had entered on 
these obscure labors, he published a work which 
at once placed him high among the writers of his 
age. It is probable that what he had suffered 
during his first year in London had often 

20 reminded him of some parts of that noble poem 
in which Juvenal has described the misery and 
degradation of a needy man of letters, lodged 
among the pigeons' nests in the tottering garrets 
that overhung the streets of Kome. Pope's 

25 admirable imitations of Horace's *' Satires" and 
'* Epistles" had recently appeared, were in every 
hand, and were by many readers thought superior 
to the originals. What Pope had done for 
Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal. The 

30 enterprise was bold, and yet judicious. For 



186 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

between Johnson and Juvenal there was much in 
common, much more certainly than between Pope 
and Horace. 

Johnson's '* London" appeared without his 
name in May, 1738. He received only ten 5 
guineas for this stately and vigorous poem; but 
the sale was rapid, and the success complete. A 
second edition was required within a week. 
Those small critics who are always desirous to 
lower established reputations ran about proclaim- 10 
ing that the anonymous satirist was superior to 
Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of litera- 
ture. It ought to be remembered, to the honor 
of Pope, that he joined heartily in the applause 
with which the appearance of a rival genius was 15 
welcomed. He made inquiries about the author 
of ''London." Such a man, he said, could not 
be long concealed. The name was soon discov- 
ered; and Pope, with great kindness, exerted 
himself to obtain an academical degree and the 20 
mastership of a grammar school for the poor 
young poet. The attempt failed, and Johnson 
remained a bookseller's hack. 

It does not appear that these two men, the 
most eminent writer of the generation which was 25 
going out, and the most eminent writer of the 
generation which was coming in, ever saw each 
other. They lived in very different circles ; one 
surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by 
starving pamphleteers and index-makers. Among so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 187 

Johnson's associates at this time may be mentioned 
Boyse, who, when his shirts were pledged, scrawled 
Latin verses sitting up in bed with his arms 
through two holes in his blanket ; who composed 

5 very respectable sacred poetry when he was sober, 
and who was at last run over by a hackney coach 
when he was drunk; Hoole, surnamed the meta- 
physical tailor, who, instead of attending to his 
measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams on 

10 the board where he sat cross-legged; and the 
penitent impostor, George Psalmanazar, who, 
after poring all day, in a humble lodging, on the 
folios of Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers, 
indulged himself at night with literary and theo- 

15 logical conversation at an alehouse in the city. 
But the most remarkable of the persons with 
whom at this time Johnson consorted, was Kichard 
Savage, an earPs son, a shoemaker's apprentice, 
who had seen life in all its forms, who had feasted 

20 among blue ribands in St. James's Square, and 
had lain with fifty pounds weight of irons on his 
legs in the condemned ward of Newgate. This 
man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, 
sunk at last into abject and hopeless poverty. 

35 His pen had failed him. His patrons had been 
taken away by death, or estranged by the riotous 
profusion with which he squandered their bounty, 
and the ungrateful insolence with which he 
rejected their advice. He now lived by beggingo 

30 He dined on venison and champagne whenever he 



188 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

had been so fortunate as to borrow a guinea. If 
his questing had been unsuccessful, he appeased 
the rage of hunger with some scraps of broken 
meat, and lay down to rest under the Piazza of 
Covent Garden in warm weather, and in cold 5 
weather as near as he could get to the furnace of 
a glass-house. Yet, in his misery, he was still an 
agreeable companion. He had an inexhaustible 
store of anecdotes about that gay and brilliant 
world from which he was now an outcast. He 10 
had observed the great men of both parties in 
hours of careless relaxation ; had seen the leaders 
of opposition without the mask of patriotism; 
and had heard the prime minister roar with 
laughter, and tell stories not over decent. Dur- 15 
ing some months Savage lived in the closest 
familiarity with Johnson ; and then the friends 
parted, not without tears. Johnson remained in 
London to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the 
west of England; lived there as he had lived 20 
everywhere; and, in 1743, died, penniless and 
heart-broken, in Bristol jail. 

Soon after his death, while the public curiosity 
was strongly excited about his extraordinary 
character, and his not less extraordinary adven- 25 
tures, a life of him appeared, widely different 
from the catchpenny lives of eminent men which 
were then a staple article of manufacture in Grub 
Street. The stvle was indeed deficient in ease 
and variety; and the writer was evidently too so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 189 

partial to the Latin element of our language. 
But the little work, with all its faults, was a 
masterpiece. No finer specimen of literary biog- 
raphy existed in any language, living or dead; 

5 and a discerning critic might have confidently 
predicted that the author was destined to be the 
founder of a new school of English eloquence. 

The ''Life of Savage" was anonymous; but it 
was well known in literary circles that Johnson 

10 was the writer. During the three years which 
followed, he produced no important work; but 
he was not, and indeed could not be, idle. The 
fame of his abilities and learning continued to 
grow. Warburton pronounced him a man of 

15 parts and genius ; and the praise of Warburton 
was then no light thing. Such was Johnson's 
reputation, that, in 1747, several eminent book- 
sellers combined to employ him in the arduous 
work of preparing a Dictionary of the English 

20 Language in two folio volumes. The sum which 
they agreed to pay him was only fifteen hundred 
guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay 
several poor men of letters who assisted him in 
the humbler parts of his task. 

25 The prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed 
to the Earl of Chesterfield. Chesterfield had 
long been celebrated for the politeness of his man- 

^ ners, the brilliancy of his wit, and the delicacy of 
his taste. He was acknowledged to be the finest 

20 speaker in the House of Lords. He had recently 



190 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

governed Ireland, at a momentous conj^njo-cture, 
with eminent firmness, wisdom, and humanity; 
and he had since become Secretary of State. He 
received Johnson's homage with the most winning 
affability, and requited it with a few guineas, 5 
bestowed doubtless in a very graceful manner, but 
was by no means desirous, to see all his carpets 
blackened with the London mud, and his soups 
and wines thrown to right and left over the gowns 
of fine ladies and the waistcoats of fine gentlemen, la 
by an absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange ^ 
starts, and uttered strange growls, who dressed 
like a scarecrow, and ate like a cormorant. Dur- 
ing some time Johnson continued to call on his 
patron; but, after being repeatedly told by the i5 
porter that his lordship was not at home, took the 
hint, and ceased to present himself at the inhos- 
pitable door. 

Johnson had flattered himself that he should 
have completed his Dictionary by the end of 20 
1750; but it was not till 1755 that he at length 
gave his huge volumes to the world. During the 
seven years which he passed in the drudgery of 
penning definitions and marking quotations for 
transcription, he sought for relaxation in literary 25 
labor of a more agreeable kind. In 1749 he pub- 
lished the ''Vanity of Human Wishes," an excel- 
lent imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. 
It is, in truth, not easy to say whether the palm 
belongs to the ancient or to the modern poet, so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 191 

The couplets in which the fall of Wolsey is 
described, though lofty and sonorous, are feeble 
when compared with the wonderful lines which 
bring before us all Eome in tumult on the day of 

5 the fall of Sejanus, the laurels on the doorposts, 
the white bull stalking towards the Capitol, the 
statues rolling down from their pedestals, the 
flatterers of the disgraced minister running to see 
him dragged with a hook through the streets, and 

LO to have a kick at his carcass before it is hurled 
into the Tiber. It must be owned, too, that in 
the concluding passage the Christian moralist has 
not made the most of his advantages, and has 
fallen decidedly short of the sublimity of his 

L5 Paga,n model. On the other hand, Juvenal's 
Hannibal must yield to Johnson's Charles; and 
Johnson's vigorous and pathetic enumeration of 
the miseries of a literary life must be allowed to 
be superior to Juvenal's lamentation over the 

JO fate of Demosthenes and Cicero. 

For the copyright of the '' Vanity of Human 
Wishes" Johnson received only fifteen guineas. 
A few days after the publication of this poem, 

\^ his tragedy, begun many years before, was brought 

J5 on the stage. His pupil, David Garrick, had, in 
1741, made his appearance on a humble stage in 
Goodman's Fields, had at once risen to the first 
place among actors, and was now, after several 
years of almost uninterrupted success, manager of 

^0 Drury Lane Theatre. The relation between him 



192 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

and his old preceptor was of a very singular kind. 
They repelled each other strongly, and yet 
attracted each other strongly. Nature had made 
them of very different clay ; and circumstances 
had fully brought out the natural peculiarities of 5 
both. Sudden prosperity had turned Garrick's 
head. Continued adversity had soured Johnson's 
temper. Johnson saw, with more envy than 
became so great a man, the villa, the plate, the 
china, the Brussels carpet, which the little mimic lo 
had got by repeating, with grimaces and gesticu- 
lations, what wiser men had written; and the 
exq;uisitely sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled 
by the thought that, while all the rest of the 
world was applauding him, he could obtain from i5 
one morose cynic, whose opinion it was impossible 
to despise, scarcely any compliment not acidulated 
with scorn. Yet the two Lichfield men had so 
many early recollections in common, and sympa- 
thized with each other on so many points on 20 
which they sympathized with nobody else in the 
vast population of the capital, that, though the 
master was often provoked by the monkey-like 
impertinence of the pupil, and the pupil by the 
bearish rudeness of the master, they remained 25 
friends till they were parted by death. Garrick 
now brought ''Irene'' out, with alterations suffi- 
cient to displease the author, yet not sufficient to 
make the piece pleasing to the audience. The 
public, however, listened with little emotion, but so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 193 

with much civility, to five acts of monotonous 
declamation. After nine representations the play 
was withdrawn. It is, indeed, altogether 
unsuited to the stage, and, even when perused in 

5 the closet, will be found hardly worthy of the 
author. He had not the slightest notion of what 
blank verse should be. A change in the last syl- 
lable of every other line would make the versifica- 
tion of the ^'Vanity of Human Wishes" closely 

10 resemble the versification of ''Irene." The poet, 
however, cleared, by his benefit-nights, and by 
the sale of the copyright of his tragedy, about 
three hundred pounds, then a great sum in his 
estimation. 

15 About a year after the representation of ' ' Irene, ' ' 
he began to publish a series of short essays on 
morals, manners, and literature. This species of 
composition had been brought into fashion by the 
success of the Tatler^ and by the still more bril- 

20 liant success of the Spectator. A crowd of small 
writers had vainly attempted to rival Addison. 
The Lay Monastery^ the Censor^ the Freethinker^ 
the Plain Dealer^ the Champion^ and other 
works of the same kind, had had their short day. 

2<5 None of them had obtained a permanent place in 
our literature ; and they are now to be found only 
in the libraries of the curious. At length Johnson 
undertook the adventure in which so many aspir- 
ants had failed. In the thirty-sixth year after 

30 the appearance of the last number of the Spec- 



194 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

tator^ appeared the first number of the Rambler. 
Prom March 1750, to March 1752, this paper 
continued to come out every Tuesday and 
Saturday. 

From the first the Ramiler was enthusiastically 5 
admired by a few eminent men. Eichardson, 
when only five numbers had appeared, pronounced 
it equal, if not superior, to the Spectator. Young 
and Hartley expressed their approbation not less 
warmly. Bubb Dodington, among whose many lo 
faults indifference to the claims of genius and 
learning cannot be reckoned, solicited the 
acquaintance of the writer. In consequence 
probably of the good offices of Dodington, who 
was then the confidential adviser of Prince Fred- i5 
erick, two of his Royal Highness 's gentlemen 
carried a gracious message to the printing-office, 
and ordered seven copies for Leicester House. 
But these overtures seem to have been very 
coldly received, Johnson had had enough of the 20 
patronage of the great to last him all his life, and 
was not disposed to haunt any other door as he 
had haunted the door of Chesterfield. 

By the public the Ramiler was at first very 
coldly received. Though the price of a number 25 
was only twopence, the sale did not amount to 
five hundred. The profits were therefore very 
small. But as soon as the flying leaves were col- 
lected and reprinted they became popular. The 
author lived to see thirteen thousand copies so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 195 

spread over England alone. Separate editions 
were published for the Scotch and Irish markets. 
A large party pronounced the style perfect, so 
absolutely perfect that in some essays it would be 

5 impossible for the writer himself to alter a single 
word for the better. Another party, not less 
numerous, vehemently accused him of having 
corrupted the purity of the English tongue. The 
best critics admitted that his diction was too 

10 monotonous, too obviously artificial, and now and 
then turgid even to absurdity. But they did 
justice to the acuteness of his observations on 
morals and manners, to the constant precision 
and frequent brilliancy of his language, to the 

15 weighty and magnificent eloquence of many 
serious passages and to the solemn yet pleasing 
humor of some of the lighter papers. On the 
question of precedence between Addison and 
Johnson, a question which, seventy years ago, was 

JO much disputed, posterity has pronounced a 
decision from which there is no appeal. Sir 
Eoger, his chaplain and his butler, Will Wimble 
and Will Honeycomb, the Vision of Mirza, the 
Journal of the Retired Citizen, the Everlasting 

J5 Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the Loves of Hilpah 
and Shalum, the Visit to the Exchange, and the 
Visit to the Abbey, are known to everybody. But 
many men and women, even of highly cultivated 
minds, are unacquainted with Squire Bluster and 

50 Mrs. Busy, Quisquilius and Venustulus, the 



196 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Allegory of Wit and Learning, the Chronicle of 
the Eevolutions of a Garret, and the sad fate of 
Aningait and Ajut. 

The last RamUer was written in a sad and 
gloomy hour. Mrs. Johnson had been given over 5 
by the physicians. Three days later she died. 
She left her husband almost broken-hearted. 
Many people had been surprised to see a man of 
his genius and learning stooping to every 
drudgery, and denying himself almost every com- lo 
fort, for the purpose of supplying a silly, affected 
old woman with superfluities, which she accepted 
with but little gratitude. But all his affection 
had been concentrated on her. He had neither 
brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. To i5 
him she was beautiful as the Gunnings, and witty 
as Lady Mary. Her opinion of his writings was 
more important to him than the voice of the pit 
of Drury Lane Theatre, or the judgment of the 
Monthly Revieio. The chief support which had 20 
sustained him through the most arduous labor of 
his life was the hope that she would enjoy the 
fame and the profit which he anticipated from his 
Dictionary. She was gone; and in that vast 
labyrinth of streets, peopled by eight hundred 25 
thousand human beings, he was alone. Yet it 
was necessary for him to set himself, as he 
expressed it, doggedly to work. After three 
more laborious years, the Dictionary was at length 
complete. 30 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 197 

It had been generally supposed that this great 
work would be dedicated to the eloquent and 
accomplished nobleman to whom the Prospectus 
had been addressed. He well knew the value of 
5 such a compliment; and therefore, when the day 
of publication drew near, he exerted himself to 
soothe, by a show of zealous and at the same time 
of delicate and judicious kindness, the pride 
which he had so cruelly wounded. Since the 
10 Ramilers had ceased to appear, the town had 
been entertained by a journal called Tlie Worlds 
to which many men of high rank and fashion con- 
tributed. In two successive numbers of Tlie 
. Worlds the Dictionary was, to use the modern 
\i phrase, puffed with wonderful skill. The wri- 
tings of Johnson were warmly praised. It was 
proposed that he should be invested with the 
authority of a Dictator, nay, of a Pope, over our 
language, and that his decisions about the mean- 
so ing and the spelling of words should be received 
as final. His two folios, it was said, would of 
course be bought by everybody who could afford 
to buy them. It was soon known that these 
papers were written by Chesterfield. But the 
25 just resentment of Johnson was not to be so 
appeased. In a letter written with singular 
energy and dignity of thought and language, he 
repelled the tardy advances of his patron. The 
Dictionary came forth without a dedication. In 
30 the preface the author truly declared that he owed 



198 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

nothing to the great, and described the difficulties 
with which he had been left to struggle so forci- 
bly and patketically, that the ablest and most 
malevolent of all the enemies of his fame. Home 
Tooke, never could read that passage without s 
tears. 

The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full 
justice, and something more than justice. The 
best lexicographer may well be content if his 
productions are received by the world with cold w 
esteem. But Johnson's Dictionary was hailed 
with an enthusiasm such as no similar work has 
ever excited. It was, indeed, the first dictionary 
which could be read with pleasure. The defini- 
tions show so much acuteness of thought and i5 
command of language, and the passages quoted 
from poets, divines, and philosophers, are so skil- 
fully selected, that a leisure hour may always be 
very agreeably spent in turning over the pages. 
The faults of the book resolve themselves, for the 20 
most part, into one great fault. Johnson was a 
wretched etymologist. He knew little or nothing 
of any Teutonic language except English, which, 
indeed, as he wrote it, was scarcely a Teutonic 
language; and thus he was absolutely at the 25 
mercy of Junius and Skinner. 

The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's 
fame, added nothing to his pecuniary means. 
The fifteen hundred guineas which the booksellers 
had agreed to pay him had been advanced and 30 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 199 

spent before the last sheets issued from the press. 
It is painful to relate that, twice in the course of 
the year which followed the publication of this 
great work, he was arrested and carried to 

5 sponging-houses, and that he was twice indebted 
for his liberty to his excellent friend Eichardson. 
It was still necessary for the man who had been 
formally saluted by the highest authority as Dic- 
tator of the English language to supply his wants 

10 by constant toil. He abridged his Dictionary. 
He proposed to bring out an edition of Shake- 
speare by subscription ; and many subscribers sent 
,;^ in their names, and laid down their money. But 
he soon found the task so little to his taste, that 

15 he turned to more attractive employments. He 
contributed many papers to a new monthly jour- 
nal, which was called the Literary Magazine. 
Few of these papers have much interest; but 
among them was the very best thing that he ever 

20 wrote, a masterpiece both of reasoning and of 
satirical pleasantry, the review of Jenyns's ''In- 
quiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil." 

In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the 
first of a series of essays, entitled the Idler. 

25 During two years these essays continued to appear 
weekly. They were eagerly read, widely circu- 
lated, and, indeed, impudently pirated, while they 
were still in the original form, and had a large 
sale when collected into volumes. The Idler may 

30 be described as a second part of the Ramiler^ 



200 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

somewhat livelier and somewhat weaker than the 
first part. 

While Johnson was busied with his Idlers^ his 
mother, who had accomplished her ninetieth year, 
died at Lichfield. It was long since he had seen 5 
her; but he had not failed to contribute largely, 
out of his small means, to her comfort. In order 
to defray the charges of her funeral, and to pay 
some debts which she had left, he wrote a little 
book in a single week, and sent off the sheets to 10 
the press without reading them over. A hun- 
dred pounds were paid him for the copyright; 
and the purchasers had great cause to be 
pleased with their bargain, for the book was ''Ras- 
selas." 15 

The success of ''Rasselas" was great, though 
such ladies as Miss Lydia Languish must have 
been grievously disappointed when they found 
that the new volume from the circulating library 
was little more than a dissertation on the author's 20 
favorite theme, the Vanity of Human Wishes; 
that the Prince of Abyssinia was without a mis- 
: tress, and the Princess without a lover; and that 
\ the story set the hero and the heroine down 
exactly where it had taken them up. The style 25 
was the subject of much eager controversy. The 
Monthly Revieio and the Critical Revieiu took 
different sides. Many readers pronounced the 
writer a pompous pedant, who would never use a 
word of two syllables where it was possible to use 30 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 201 

a word of six, and who could not make a waiting- 
woman relate her adventures without balancing 
every noun with another noun, and every epithet 
with another epithet. Another party, not less 

5 zealous, cited with delight numerous passages in 
which weighty meaning was expressed with accu- 
racy and illustrated with splendor. And both the 
censure and the praise were merited. 

About the plan of ''Rasselas'* little was said by 

10 the critics ; and yet the faults of the plan might 
seem to invite severe criticism. Johnson has 
frequently blamed Shakespeare for neglecting the 
proprieties of time and place, and for ascribing to 
one age or nation the manners and opinions of 

15 another. Yet Shakespeare has not sinned in this 
way more grievously than Johnson. Rasselas 
and Imlac, Nekayah and Pekuah, are evidently 
meant to be Abyssinians of the eighteenth cen- 
tury — for the Europe which Imlac describes is 

20 the Europe of the eighteenth century — and the 
inmates of the Happy Valley talk familiarly of 
that law of gravitation which Newton discovered, 
and which was not fully received even at Cam- 
bridge till the eighteenth century. What a real 

25 company of Abyssinians would have been may be 
learned from ''Bruce's Travels." But Johnson, 
not content with turning filthy savages, ignorant 
of their letters, and gorged with raw steaks cut 
from living cows, into philosophers as eloquent 

30 and enlightened as himself or his triend Burke, 



202 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

and into ladies as highly accomplished as Mrs. 
Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the whole 
domestic system of England to Egypt. Into a 
land of harems, a land of polygamy, a land where 
women are married without ever being seen, he 5 
introduced the flirtations and jealousies of our 
ballrooms. In a land where there is boundless 
liberty of divorce, wedlock is described as the 
indissoluble compact. ''A youth and maiden 
meeting by chance, or brought together by lo 
artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, 
go home and dream of each other. Such," says 
Easselas, ^'is the common process of marriage." 
Such it may have been, and may still be, in Lon- 
don, but assuredly not at Cairo. A writer who is 
was guilty of such improprieties had little right to 
blame the poet who made Hector quote Aristotle, 
and represented Julio Eomano as flourishing in 
the days of the oracle of Delphi. 

By such exertions as have been described, John- 20 
son supported himself till the yeaf 1762. In that 
year a great change in his circumstances took 
place. He had from a child been an enemy of 
the reigning dynasty. His Jacobite prejudices 
had been exhibited with little disguise both in his 25 
works and in his conversation. Even in his massy 
and elaborate Dictionary he had, with a strange 
want of taste and judgment, inserted bitter and 
contumelious reflections on the Whig party. The 
excise, which was a favorite resource of Whig 30 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 203 

financiers, he had designated as a hateful tax. 
He had railed against the commissioners of excise 
in language so coarse that they had seriously 
thought of prosecuting him. He had with diffi- 

5 culty been prevented from holding up the Lord 
Privy Seal by name as an example of the meaning 
of the word "renegade." A pension he had 
defined as pay given to a state hireling to betray 
his country; a pensioner as a slave of state hired 

10 by a stipend to obey a master. It seemed unlikely 
that the author of these definitions would himself 
be pensioned. But that was a time of wonders. 
George the Third had ascended the throne ; and 
had, in the course of a few months, disgusted 

15 many of the old friends, and conciliated many of 
the old enemies of his house. The city was 
becoming mutinous ; Oxford was becoming loyal. 
Cavendishes and Bentincks were murmuring. 
Somersets and Wyndhams were hastening to kiss 

20 hands. The head of the treasury was now Lord 
Bute, who was a Tory, and could have no objec- 
tion to Johnson's Toryism. Bute wished to be 
thought a patron of men of letters ; and Johnson 
was one of the most eminent and one of the most 

25 needy men of letters in Europe. A pension of 
three hundred a year was graciously offered, and 
with very little hesitation accepted. 

This event produced a change in Johnson's 
whole way of life. For the first time since his 

30 boyhood he no longer felt the daily goad urging 



204 MAC AULA Y'S ESSAYS 

him to the daily toil. He was at liberty, after 
thirty years of anxiety and drudgery, to indulge 
his constitutional indolence ; to lie in bed till two 
in the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in 
the morning, without fearing either the printer's 5 
devil or the sheriff's ofl&cer. 

One laborious task indeed he had bound himself 
to perform. He had received large subscriptions 
for his promised edition of Shakespeare; he had 
lived on those subscriptions during some years : lo 
and he could not without disgrace omit to per- 
form his part of the contract. His friends repeat- 
edly exhorted him to make an effort; and he 
repeatedly resolved to do so. But, notwithstand- 
ing their exhortations and his resolutions, month i5 
followed month, year followed year, and nothing 
was done. He prayed fervently against his idle- 
ness. He determined, as often as he received the 
sacrament, that he would no longer doze away 
and trifle away his time; but the spell under 20 
which he lay resisted prayer and sacrament. His 
private notes at this time are made up of self- 
reproaches. ''My indolence," he wrote on Easter 
Eve in 1764, ''has sunk into grosser sluggishness. 
A kind of strange oblivion has overspread me, so 25 
that I know not what has become of the last 
year." Easter, 1765, came, and found him still 
in the same state. "My time," he wrote, "has 
been unprofitably spent, and seems as a dream 
that has left nothing behind. My memory grows 30 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 205 

confused, and I know not how the days pass over 
me." Happily for his honor, the charm which 
held him captive was at length broken by no 
gentle or friendly hand. He had been weak 

5 enough to pay serious attention to a story about 
a ghost which haunted a house in Cock Lane, and 
had actually gone himself, with some of his 
friends, at one in the morning, to St. John's 
Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of receiving a 

10 communication from the perturbed spirit. But 
the spirit, though adjured with all solemnity, 
remained obstinately silent; and it soon appeared 
that a naughty girl of eleven had been amusing 
herself by making fools of so many philosophers. 

15 Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk 
with popularity and burning with party spirit, 
was looking for some man of established fame and 
Tory politics to insult, celebrated the Cock Lane 
Ghost in three cantos, nicknamed Johnson ''Pom- 

80 peso," asked where the book was which had been 
so long promised and so liberally paid for, and 
directly accused the great moralist of cheating. 
This terrible word proved effectual; and in 
October, 1765, appeared, after a delay of nine 

85 years, the new edition of Shakespeare. 

This publication saved Johnson's character for 
honesty, but added nothing to the fame of his 
abilities and learning. The preface, though it 
contains some good passages, is not in his best 

30 manner. The most valuable notes are those in 



206 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

which he had an opportunity of showing how 
attentively he had during many years observed 
human life and human nature. The best speci- 
men is the note on the character of Polonius. 
Nothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm 5 
Meister's admirable examination of ''Hamlet." 
But here praise must end. It would be difficult to 
name a more slovenly, a more worthless, edition 
of any great classic. The reader may turn over 
play after play without finding one happy con- 10 
jectural emendation, or one ingenious and satis- 
factory explanation of a passage which had baffled 
preceding commentators. Johnson had, in his 
Prospectus, told the world that he was peculiarly 
fitted for the task which he had undertaken, 15 
because he had, as a lexicographer, been under 
the necessity of taking a wider view of the Eng- 
lish language than any of his predecessors. That 
his knowledge of our literature was extensive, is 
indisputable. But, unfortunately, he had alto- 20 
gether neglected that very part of our literature 
with which it is especially desirable that an editor 
of Shakespeare should be conversant. It is 
dangerous to assert a negative. Yet little will be 
risked by the assertion, that in the two folio vol- 25 
umes of the English Dictionary there is not a 
single passage quoted from any dramatist of the 
Elizabethan age, except Shakespeare and Ben. 
Even from Ben the quotations are few. Johnson 
might easily, in a few months, have made himself so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 207 

well acquftinted with every old play that was 
extant. But it never seems to have occurred to 
him that this was a necessary preparation for the 
work which he had undertaken. He would 

3 doubtless have admitted that it would be the 
height of absurdity in a man who was not familiar 
with the works of Aeschylus and Euripides to 
publish an edition of Sophocles. Yet he ventured 
to publish an edition of Shakespeare, without 

having ever in his life, as far as can be discov- 
ered, read a single scene of Massinger, Ford, 
Decker, Webster, Marlowe, Beaumont, or 
Fletcher. His detractors were noisy and scur- 
rilous. Those who nSfiTst loved and honored him 

5 had little to say in praise of the manner in which 
he had discharged the duty of a commentator. 
He had, however, acquitted himself of a debt 
which had long lain heavy on his conscience, and 
he sank back into the repose from which the sting 

of satire had roused him. He long continued to 
live upon the fame which he had already won. 
He was honored by the University of Oxford with 
a Doctor's degree, by the Eoyal Academy with a 
professorship, and by the King with an interview, 

s in which his Majesty most graciously expressed a 
hope that so excellent a writer would not cease 
to write. In the interval, however, between 1765 
and 1775, Johnson published only two or three 
political tracts, the longest of which he could 

to have produced in forty-eight hours, if he had 



208 MACAULAYS ESSAYS 

worked as he worked on the ''Life of Savage" 
and on ''Easselas." 

But though his pen was now idle his tongue 
was active. The influence exercised by his con- 
versation, directly upon those with whom he 5 
lived, and indirectly on the whole literary world, 
was altogether without a parallel. His colloquial 
talents were, indeed, of the highest order. He 
had strong sense, quick discernment, wit, humor, 
immense knowledge of literature and of life, and lo 
an infinite store of curious anecdotes. As 
respected style, he spoke far better than he 
wrote. Every sentence which dropped fi'om his 
lips was as correct in structure as the most nicely 
balanced period of the Ramller. But in his talk i5 
there were no pompous triads, and little more 
than a fair proportion of words in osity and 
ation. All was simplicity, ease, and vigor. He 
uttered his short, weighty, and pointed sentences 
with a power of voice, and a justness and energy 20 
of emphasis, of which the effect was rather 
increased than diminished by the rollings of his 
huge form, and by the asthmatic gaspings and 
puflBngs in which the peals of his eloquence gen- 
erally ended. Xor did the laziness which made 25 
him unwilling to sit down to his desk prevent 
him from giving instruction or entertainment 
orally. To discuss questions of taste, of learn- 
ing, of casuistry, in language so exact and so 
forcible that it might have been printed Tvithout so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 209 

the alteration of a word, was to him no exertion, 
but a pleasure. He loved, as he said, to fold his 
legs and have his talk out. He was ready to 
bestow the overflowings of his full mind on any- 

5 body who would start a subject; on a fellow- 
passenger in a stage-coach, or on the person who 
sat at the same table with him in an eating-house. 
But his conversation was nowhere so brilliant and 
striking as when he was surrounded by a few 

10 friends, whose abilities^ and knowledge enabled 
them, as he once expressed it, to send him back 
every ball that he threw. Some of these, in 1764, 
formed themselves into a club, which gradually 
became a formidable power in the commonwealth 

15 of letters. The verdicts pronounced by this con- 
clave on new books were speedily known over all 
London, and were sufficient to sell off a whole 
edition in a day, or to condemn the sheets to the 
service of the trunkmaker and the pastrycook. 

20 Nor shall we think this strange when we consider 
what great and various talents and acquirements 
met in the little fraternity. Goldsmith was the 
representative of poetry and light literature, 
Eeynolds of the arts, Burke of political eloquence 

25 and political philosophy. There, too, were 
Gibbon, the greatest historian, and Jones the 
greatest linguist, of the age. Garrick brought to 
the meetings his inexhaustible pleasantry, his 
incomparable mimicry, and his consummate 

30 knowledge of stage effect. Among the most con- 



210 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

stant attendants were two high-born and high- 
bred gentlemen, closely bound together by friend- 
ship, but of widely different characters and habits, 
— Bennet Langton, distinguished by his skill in 
Greek literature, by the orthodoxy of his opinions, 5 
and by the sanctity of his life; and Topham 
Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his knowl- 
edge of the gay world, his fastidious taste, and his 
sarcastic wit. To predominate over such a society * 
was not easy. Yet even over such a society lo 
Johnson predominated. Burke might, indeed, 
have disputed the supremacy to which others were 
under the necessity of submitting. But Burke, 
though not generally a very patient listener, was 
content to take the second part when Johnson was i5 
present ; and the club itself, consisting of so many 
eminent men, is to this day popularly designated 
as Johnson's Club. 

Among the members of this celebrated body 
was one to whom it has owed the greater part of 20 
its celebrity, yet who was regarded with little 
respect by his brethren, and had not without diflB- 
culty obtained a seat among them. This was 
James Boswell, a young Scotch lawyer, heir to an 
honorable name and a fair estate. That he was a 25 
coxcomb and a bore, weak, vain, pushing, curious, 
garrulous, was obvious to all who were acquainted 
with him. That he could not reason, that he had 
no wit, no humor, no eloquence, is apparent from 
his writings. And yet his writings are read so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 211 

beyond the Mississippi, and under the Southern 
Cross, and are likely to be read as long as the 

'English exists, either as a living or as a dead 
language. Nature had made him a slave and an 

5 idolater. His mind resembled those creepers 
which the botanists call parasites, and which can 
subsist only by clinging round the stems and 
imbibing the juices of stronger plants. He must 
have fastened himself on somebody. He might 

) have fastened himself on Wilkes, and have become 
the fiercest patriot in the Bill of Rights Society. 
He might have fastened himself on Whitefield, 
and have become the loudest field preacher among 
the Calvinistic Methodists. In a happy hour he 

) fastened himself on Johnson. The pair might 
seem ill matched. For Johnson had early been 
prejudiced against Boswell's country. To a man 
of Johnson's strong understanding and irritable 
temper, the silly egotism and adulation of Boswell 

) must have been as teasing as the constant buzz of 
a fly. Johnson hated to be questioned; and 
Boswell was eternally catechizing him on all kinds 
of subjects, and sometimes propounded such ques- 
tions as, "What would you do, sir, if you were 

) locked up in a tower with a baby?" Johnson was 
a water-drinker, and Boswell was a winebibber, 
and indeed little better than an habitual sot. It 
was impossible that there should be perfect har- 
mony between two such companions. Indeed, 

3 the great man was sometimes provoked into fits 



212 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

of passion, in which he said things which the small 
man, during a few hours, seriously resented. 
Every quarrel, however, was soon made up. * 
During twenty years the disciple continued to 
worship the master; the master continued to 5 
scold the disciple, to sneer at him, and to love 
him. The two friends ordinarily resided at a 
great distance from each other. Boswell prac- 
tised in the Parliament House of Edinburgh, and 
could pay only occasional visits to London. Dur- 1 
ing those visits his chief business was to watch 
Johnson, to discover all Johnson's habits, to turn 
the conversation to subjects about which Johnson 
was likely to say something remarkable, and to fill 
quarto note-books with minutes of what Johnson 1 
had said. In this way were gathered the mate- 
rials, out of which was afterwards constructed the 
most interesting biographical work in the world. 
Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson 
formed a connection less important indeed to his 2 
fame, but much more important to his happiness, 
than his connection with Boswell. Henry Thrale, 
one of the most opulent brewers in the kingdom, 
a man of sound and cultivated understanding, 
rigid principles, and liberal spirit, was married to 
one of those clever, kind-hearted, engaging, vain, 
pert young women, who are perpetually doing or 
saying what is not exactly right, but who, do or 
say what they may, are always agreeable. In 1765 
the Thrales became acquainted with Johnson, and 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 213 

the acquaintance ripened fast into friendship. 
They were astonished and delighted by the bril- 
liancy of his conversation. They were flattered 
by finding that a man so widely celebrated pre- 

5 ferred their house to any other in London. Even 
the peculiarities which seemed to unfit him for 
civilized society, — his gesticulations, his rollings, 
his puffings, his mutterings, the strange way in 
which he put on his clothes, the ravenous eager- 

ness with which he devoured his dinner, his fits 
of melancholy, his fits of anger, his frequent 
rudeness, his occasional ferocity, — ^increased the 
interest which his new associates took in him. 
For these things were the cruel marks left behind 

5 by a life which had been one long conflict with 
disease and adversity. In a vulgar hack writer, 
such oddities would have excited only disgust. 
But in a man of genius, learning, and virtue, their 
effect was to add pity to admiration and esteem. 

Johnson soon had an apartment at the brewery 
in Southwark, and a still more pleasant apartment 
at the villa of his friends on Streatham Common. 
A large part of every year he passed in those 
abodes — abodes which must have seemed magnifi- 

5 cent and luxurious indeed, when compared with 
the dens in v/hich he had generally been lodged. 
But his chief pleasures were derived from what 
the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called 'Hhe 
endearing elegance of female friendship." Mrs. 

!0 Thrale rallied him, soothed him, coaxed him; 



214 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

and, if she sometimes provoked him by her flip- 
pancy, made ample amends by listening to his 
reproofs with angelic sweetness of temper. When 
he was diseased in body and in mind, she was the 
most tender of nurses. No comfort that wealth 5 
could purchase, no contrivance that womanly 
ingenuity, set to work by womanly compassion, 
could devise, was wanting to his sick-room. He 
requited her kindness by an affection pure as the 
affection of a father, yet delicately tinged with a lo 
gallantry which, though awkward, must have 
been more flattering than the attentions of a 
crowd of the fools who gloried in the names, now 
obsolete, of Buck and Macc^roni. It should seem 
that a full half of Johnson's life, during about is 
sixteen years, was passed under the roof of the 
Thrales. He accompanied the family soifietimes 
to Bath, and sometimes to Brighton, once to 
Wales, and once to Paris. But he had at the 
same time a house in one of the narrow and 2<] 
gloomy courts on the north of Fleet Street. In 
the garrets was his library, a large and miscella- 
neous collection of books, falling to pieces and 
begrimed with dust. On a lower floor he some- 
times, but very rarely, regaled a friend with a 25 
plain dinner, — a veal pie, or a leg of lamb and 
spinach, and a rice pudding. Nor was the dwell- 
ing uninhabited during his long absences. It was 
the home of the most extraordinary assemblage 
of inmates that ever was brought together, xit 3( 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 215 

the head of the establishment Johnson had placed 
an old lady named Williams, whose chief recom- 
mendations were her blindness and her poverty. 
But, in spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he 
5 gave an asylum to another lady who was as poor 
as herself, Mrs. Desmoulins, whose family he had 
known many years before in Staffordshire. Eoom 
was found for the daughter of Mrs. Desmoulins, 
and for another destitute damsel, who was gener- 
ic ally addressed as Miss Carmichael, but whom her 
generous host called Polly. An old quack doctor 
named Levett, who bled and dosed coal-heavers 
and hackney coachmen, and received for fees 
crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and 
15 sometimes a little copper, completed this strange 
menagerie. All these poor creatures were at con- 
stant war with each other, and with Johnson's 
negro servant Frank. Sometimes, indeed, they 
transferred their hostilities from the servant to 
20 the master, complained that a better table was not 
kept for them, and railed or maundered till their 
benefactor v/as glad to make his escape to 
Streatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. And yet he, 
who was generally the haughtiest and most irrita- 
25 ble of mankind, who was but too prompt to resent 
anything which looked like a slight on the part of 
a purse-proud bookseller, or of a noble and pow- 
erful patron, bore patiently from mendicants, 
who, but for his bounty, must have gone to the 
30 workhouse, insults more provoking than those for 



216 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

which he had knocked down Osborne and bidden 
defiance to Chesterfield. Year after year Mrs. 
Williams and Mrs. Desmonlins, Polly and Levett, 
continued to torment him and to live upon him. 

The course of life which has been described was 5 
interrupted in Johnson's sixty-fourth year by an 
important event. He had early read an account 
of the Hebrides, and had been much interested by 
learning that there was so near him a land peo- 
pled by a race which was still as rude and simple lo 
as in the Middle Ages. A wish to become inti- 
mately acquainted with a state of society so utterly 
unlike all that he had ever seen frequently crossed 
his mind. But it is not probable that his curi- 
osity would haye overcome his habitual sluggish- 15 
ness, and his love of the smoke, the mud, and the 
cries of London, had not Boswell importuned him 
to attempt the adventure, and offered to be his 
squire. At length, in August, 1773, Johnson 
crossed the Highland line, and plunged coura- 20 
geously into what was then considered, by most 
Englishmen, as a dreary and perilous wilderness. 
After wandering about two months through the 
Celtic region, sometimes in rude boats which did 
not protect him from the rain, and sometimes on 25 
small shaggy ponies which could hardly bear his 
weight, he returned to his old haunts with a mind 
full of new images and new theories. During the 
following year he employed himself in recording 
his adventures. About the beginning of 1775 his so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 217 

^^Journey to the Hebrides" was published, and 
was, during some weeks, the chief subject of con- 
versation in all circles in which any attention was 
paid to literature. The book is still read with 

5 pleasure. The narrative is entertaining; the 
speculations, whether sound or unsound, are 
always ingenious; and the style, though too stiff 
and pompous, is somewhat easier and more grace- 
ful than that of his early writings. His prejudice 

10 against the Scotch had at length become little 
more than matter of jest; and whatever remained 
of the old feeling had been effectually removed by 
the kind and respectful hospitality with which he 
had been received in every part of Scotland. It 

15 was, of course, not to be expected that an Oxonian 
Tory should praise the Presbyterian polity and 
ritual, or that an eye accustomed to the hedge- 
rows and parks of England should not be struck 
by the bareness of Berwickshire and East Lothian. 

20 But even in censure Johnson's tone is not 
unfriendly. The most enlightened Scotchmen, 
with Lord Mansfield at their head, were well 
pleased. But some foolish and ignorant Scotch- 
men were moved to anger by a little unpalatable 

25 truth, v/hich was mingled with much eulogy, and 
assailed him whom they chose to consider as the 
enemy of their country with libels much more 
dishonorable to their country than anything that 
he had ever said or written. They published 

30 paragraphs in the newspapers, articles in the 



218 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

magazines, sixpenny pamphlets, five-shilling 
books. One scribbler abused Johnson for being 
blear-eyed ; another for being a pensioner ; a third 
informed the Tvorld that one of the Doctor's 
uncles had been convicted of felony in Scotland, 5 
and had. found that there was in that countiy one 
tree capable of supporting the weight of an Eng- 
lishman. Macpherson, whose ''Fingal" had been 
proved in the "Journey" to be an impudent 
forgery, threatened to take vengeance with a lo 
cane. The only effect of this threat was that 
Johnson reiterated the charge of forgery in the 
most contemptuous t^rms, and walked about, 
during some time, with a cudgel, which, if the 
impostor had not been too wise to encounter it, is 
would assuredly have descended upon him, to bor- 
row the sublime language of his own epic poem, 
"like a hammer on the red son of the furnace." 
i-Of other assailants Johnson took no notice 
whatever. He had early resolved never to be 20 
drawn into controversv ; and he adhered to his 
resolution with a steadfastness which is the more 
extraordinary, because he was, both intellectually 
and morally, of the stuff of which controversialists 
are made. In conversation, he was a singularly 25 
eager, acute, and pertinacious disputant. When 
at a loss for good reasons, he had recourse to 
sophistiy; and when heated by altercation, he 
made unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. 
But when he took his pen in his hand, his whole so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 219 

character seemed to be changed. A hundred bad 
writers misrepresented him and reviled him; but 
not one of the hundred could boast of having been 
thought by him worthy of a refutation, or even of 

5 a retort. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, 
and Hendersons, did their best to annoy him, in 
the hope that he would give them importance by 
answering them. But the reader will in vain 
search his works for any allusion to Kenrick or 

10 Campbell, to MacNicol or Henderson. One 
Scotchman, bent on vindicating the fame of 
Scotch learning, defied him to the combat in a 
detestable Latin hexameter : — 

Maxima, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum. 

15 But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. 
He had learned, both from his own observation 
and from literary history, in which he was deeply 
read, that the place of books in the public esti- 
mation is fixed, not by what is written about 

20 them, but by what is written in them; and that 
an author whose works are likely to live is very 
unwise if he stoops to wrangle with detractors 
whose works are certain to die. He always main- 
tained that fame was a shuttlecock which could 

25 be kept up only by being beaten back, as well as 
beaten forward, and which would soon fall if 
there were only one battledore. No saying was 
oftener in his mouth than that fine apophthegm 
of Bentley, that no man was ever written down 

30 but by himself. 



220 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Unhappily, a few months after the appearance 
of the *' Journey to the Hebrides" Johnson did 
what none of his envious assailants could have 
done, and to a certain extent succeeded in writing 
himself down. The disputes between England 5 
and her American colonies had reached a point at 
which no amicable adjustment was possible. Civil 
war was evidently impending ; and the ministers 
seem to have thought that the eloquence of John- 
son might with advantage be employed to inflame lo 
the nation against the opposition here, and 
against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He had 
already written two or three tracts in defence of 
the foreign and domestic policy of the govern- 
ment; and those tracts, though hardly worthy of i5 
him, were much superior to the crowd of pam- 
phlets which lay on the counters of Almon and 
Stockdale. But his ''Taxation Iso Tyranny" 
was a pitiable failure. The very title was a silly 
phrase, which can have been recommended to his so 
choice by nothing but a jingling alliteration which 
he ought to have despised. The arguments were 
such as boys use in debating societies. The 
pleasantry was as awkward as the gambols of a 
hippopotamus. Even Boswell was forced to own 35 
that, in this unfortunate piece, he could detect 
no trace of his master's powers. The general 
opinion was that the strong faculties which had 
produced the Dictionary and the Rambler were 
beginning to feel the effect of time and of disease, so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 221 

and that the old man would best consult his 
credit by writing no more. 

But this was a great mistake. Johnson had 
failed, not because his mind was less vigorous 

5 than when he wrote ''Rasselas" in the evenings 
of a week, but because he had foolishly chosen, 
or suffered others to choose for him, a subject 
such as he would at no time have been competent 
to treat. He was in no sense a statesman. He 

10 never willingly read or thought or talked about 
affairs of state. He loved biography, literary his- 
tory, the history of manners ; but political history 
was positively distasteful to him. The question 
at issue between the colonies and the mother 

15 country was a question about which he had really 
nothing to say. He failed, therefore, as the 
greatest men must fail when they attempt to do 
that for which they are unfit; as Burke would 
have failed if Burke had tried to write comedies 

20 like those of Sheridan; as Reynolds would have 
failed if Reynolds had tried to paint landscapes 
like those of Wilson. Happily, Johnson soon had 
an opportunity of proving most signally that his 
failure was not to be ascribed to intellectual 

25 decay. 

" On Easter Eve, 1777, some persons, deputed by 
a meeting which consisted of forty of the first 
booksellers in London, called upon him. Though 
he had some scruples about doing business at that 

30 season, he received his visitors with much civility. 



222 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

They came to inform him that a new edition of 
the English poets, from Cowley downwards, was 
in contemplation, and to ask him to furnish short 
biographical prefaces. He readily undertook the 
task, — a task for which he was pre-eminently 5 
qualified. His knowledge of the literary history 
of England since the Kestoration was unrivalled. 
That knowledge he had derived partly from books, 
and partly from sources which had long been 
closed, — from old Grub Street traditions; from 10 
the talk of forgotten poetasters and pamphleteei's 
who had long been lying in parish vaults ; from 
the recollections of such men as Gilbert Walmes- 
ley, who had conversed with the wits of But- 
ton ; Gibber, who had mutilated the plays of two 15 
generations of dramatists; Orrery, who had been 
admitted to the society of Swift; and Savage, who 
had rendered services of no very honorable kind 
to Pope. The biographer therefore sat down to 
his task with a mind full of matter. He had at so 
first intended to give only a paragraph to every 
minor poet, and only four or five pages to the 
greatest name. But the flood of anecdote and 
criticism overflowed the narrow channel. The 
work, which was originally meant to consist only 25 
of a few sheets, swelled into ten volumes, — small 
volumes, it is true, and not closely printed. The 
first four appeared in 1779, the remaining six 
in 1781. 

The "Lives of the Poets" are, on the whole, so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 223 

the best of Johnson's works. The narratives are 
as entertaining as any novel. The remarks on 
life and on human nature are eminently shrewd 
and profound. The criticisms are often excellent, 

5 and, even when grossly and provokingly unjust, 
well deserve to be studied. For, however errone- 
ous they may be, they are never silly. They are 
the judgments of a mind trammelled by preju- 
dice and deficient in sensibility, but vigorous and 

10 acute. They therefore generally contain a por- 
tion of valuable truth which deserves to be sepa- 
rated from the alloy ; and, at the very worst, they 
mean something, a praise to which much of what 
is called criticism in our time has no pretensions. 

15 Savage's "Life" Johnson reprinted nearly as it 
had appeared in 1744. Whoever, after reading 
that life, will turn to the other lives, will be 
struck by the difference of style. Since Johnson 
had been at ease in his circumstances he had 

30 written little and talked much. When, therefore, 
he, after the lapse of years, resumed his pen, the 
mannerism which he had contracted while he was 
in the constant habit of elaborate composition, 
was less perceptible than formerly; and his 

25 diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it 
had formerly wanted. The improvement may be 
discerned by a skilful critic in the ''Journey to 
the Hebrides," and in the "Lives of the Poets" 
is so obvious that it cannot escape the notice of 

30 the most careless reader. 



224 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Among the lives the best are perhaps those of 
Cowley, Dryden, and Pope. The very worst is, 
beyond all doubt, that of Gray. 

This great work at once became popular. 
There was, indeed, much just and much unjust 5 
censure; but even those who were loudest in 
blame were attracted by the book in spite of 
themselves. Malone computed the gains of the 
publishers at five or six thousand pounds. But 
the writer was very poorly remunerated. Intend- ic 
ing at first to write very short prefaces, he had 
stipulated for only two hundred guineas. The 
booksellers, when they saw how far his perform- 
ance had surpassed his promise, added only 
another hundred. Indeed, Johnson, though he is 
did not despise, or affect to despise, money, and 
though his strong sense and long experience 
ought to have qualified him to protect his own 
interests, seems to have been singularly unskilful 
and unlucky in his literary bargains. He was 20 
generally reputed the first English writer of his 
time. Yet several writers of his time sold their 
copyrights for sums such as he never ventured to 
ask. To give a single instance, Eobertson received 
four thousand five hundred pounds for the ''His- 25 
tory of j^Charles V."; and it is no disrespect to 
the memory of Eobertson to say that the "History 
of Charles V." is both a less valuable and a less 
amusing book than the ''Lives of the Poets." 

Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. 30 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 225 

The infirmities of age were coming fast upon him. 
That inevitable event of which he never thought 
without horror was brought near to him; and his 
whole life was darkened by the shadow of death. 

5 He had often to pay the cruel price of longevity. 
Every year he lost what could never be replaced. 
The strange dependants to whom he had given 
shelter, and to whom, in spite of their faults, he 
was strongly attached by habit, dropped off one 

10 by one; and, in the silence of his home, he 
regretted even the noise of their scolding matches. 
The kind and generous Thrale was no more; and 
it would have been well if his wife had been laid 
beside him. But she survived to be the laughing- 

15 stock of those who had envied her, and to draw 
from the eyes of the old man who had loved her 
beyond anything in the world, tears far more 
bitter than he would have shed over her grave. 
With some estimable and many agreeable qualities, 

20 she was not made to be independent. The con- 
trol of a mind more steadfast than her own was 
necessary to her respectability. While she was 
restrained by her husband, a man of sense and 
firmness, indulgent to her taste in trifies, but 

25 always the undisputed master of his house, her 
worst offences had been impertinent jokes, white 
lies, and short fits of pettishness, ending in sunny 
good-humor. But he was gone ; and she was left 
an opulent widow of forty, with strong sensibility, 

30 volatile fancy, and slender judgment. She soon 



226 MACAULAY'S; ESSAYS 

fell in love with a music-master from Brescia, in 
whom nobody but herself could discover anything 
to admire. Her pride, and perhaps some better 
feelings, struggled hard against tliis degrading 
passion. But the struggle irritated her nerves, & 
soured her temper, and at length endangered her 
health. Conscious that her choice was one which 
Johnson could not approve, she became desirous 
to escape from his inspection. Her manner 
towards him changed. She was sometimes cold lo 
and sometimes petulant. She did not conceal her 
joy when he left Streatham; she never pressed 
Mm to return; and, if he came unbidden, she 
received ^him in a manner which convinced him 
that he was no longer a welcome guest. He took lo 
the very intelligible hints which she gave. He 
read, for the last time, a chapter of the Greek 
Testament in the library which had been formed 
by himself. In a solemn and tender prayer he 
commended the house and its inmates to the 20 
Divine protection, and^ with emotions which 
choked his voice and convulsed his powerful 
frame, left forever that beloved home for the 
gloomy and desolate house behind Fleet Street, 
where the few and evil days which still remained 25 
to him were to run out. Here, in June, 1783, 
he had a paralytic stroke, from which, however, 
he recovered, and which does not appear to have 
at all impaired his intellectual faculties. But 
other maladies came thick upon him. His asthma so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 227 

tormented him day and night. Dropsical symp- 
toms made their appearance. While sinking 
under a complication of diseases, he heard that 
the woman whose friendship had been the chief 

5 happiness of sixteen years of his life had married 
an Italian fiddler; that all London was crying 
shame upon her; and that the newspapers and 
magazines were filled with allusions to the Ephe- 
sian matron and the two pictures in "Hamlet." 

He vehemently said that he would try to forget her 
existence. He never uttered her name. Every 
memorial of her which met his eye he flung into 
the fire. She meanwhile fled from the laughter 
and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen 

5 to a land where she was unknown, hastened across 
Mount Cenis, and learned, while passing a merry 
Christmas of concerts and lemonade parties at 
Milan, that the great man with whose name hers 
is inseparably associated, had ceased to exist. 

:o He had, in spite of much mental and much 
bodily affliction, clung vehemently to life. The 
feeling described in that fine but gloomy paper 
which closes the series of his Idlers^ seemed to grow 
stronger in him as his last hour drew near. He 

55 fancied that he should be able to draw his breath 
more easily in a southern climate, and would 
probably have set out for Rome and Naples but 
for his fear of the expense of the journey. That 
expense, indeed, he had the means of defraying; 

w for he had laid up about two thousand pounds, 



228 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

the fruit of labors which had made the fortune of 
several publishers. But he was unwilling to 
break in upon this hoard, and he seems to have 
wished even to keep its existence a secret. Some 
of his friends hoped that the government might 5 
be induced to increase his pension to six hundred 
pounds a year; but this hope was disappointed, 
and he resolved to stand one English winter more. 
That winter was his last. His legs grew weaker ; 
his breath grew shorter ; the fatal water gathered lo 
fast, in spite of incisions which he, courageous 
against pain, but timid against death, urged his 
surgeons to make deeper and deeper. Though 
the tender care which had mitigated his sufferings 
during months of sickness at Streatham was is 
withdrawn, he was not left desolate. The ablest 
physicians and surgeons attended him, and 
refused to accept fees from him. Burke parted 
from him with deep emotion. Windham sat 
much in the sick-room, arranged the pillows, and 20 
sent his own servant to watch at night by the 
bed. Frances Burney, whom the old man had 
cherished with fatherly kindness, stood weeping 
at the door ; while Langton, whose piety eminently 
qualified him to be an adviser and comforter at 25 
such a time, received the last pressure of his 
friend's hand within. When at length the 
moment, dreaded through so many years, came 
close, the dark cloud passed away from Johnson's 
mind. His temper became unusually patient and so 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 229 

gentle; he ceased to think with terror of death, 
and of that which lies beyond death; and he 
spoke much of the mercy of God, and of the pro- 
pitiation of Christ. In this serene frame of mind 
5 he died on tb 13th of December, 1784. He was 
laid, a week ■ ier, in Westminster Abbey, among 
the eminent iiien of whom he had been the histo- 
rian, — Cowley and Denham, Dryden and Con- 
greve, Gay, Prior, and Addison. 

10 Since his death, the popularity of his works — 
the ''Lives of the Poets," and, perhaps, the 
"Vanity of Human Wishes," excepted — has 
greatly diminished. His Dictionary has been 
altered by editors till it can scarcely be called 

15 his. An allusion to his Rambler or his Idler is 
not readily apprehended in literary circles. The 
fame even of ''Kasselas" has grown somewhat dim. 
But though the celebrity of the writings may 
have declined, the celebrity of the writer, strange 

20 to say, is as great as ever. Boswell's book has 
done for him more than the best of his own books 
could do. The memory of other authors is kept 
alive by their works. But the memory of Johnson 
keeps many of his works alive. The old philoso- 

25 pher is still among us in the brown coat with the 
metal buttons, and the shirt which ought to be 
at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, 
drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat like 
a tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans. No 

30 human being who has been more than seventy 



230 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

years in the grave is so well known to us. And it 
is but just to say that our intimate acquaintance 
with what he would himself have called the 
anfractuosities of his intellect and of his temper, 
series only to strengthen our con^^ction that he 5 
was both a great and a good man. 



NOTES. 



Although these notes are critical, they include few questions in 
regard to Macaulay's structure and style. It is deemed that the 
Introduction affords a sufQcient starting-point for studies in that 
direction. Explanations of names, etc., must be sought in the 
Glossary. 

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 

Of the thirty-six essays contributed by Macaulay to the 
Edinburgh Review , this was the thirty-fourth. It appeared in 
July, 1843, and represents him at the maturity of his powers. 
It cannot quite rank, however, with such essays as those oii 
Clive and Hastings, because the author is not so much at 
home in criticism as in history. It will be profitable to read 
in connection with it the essays upon Addison by Johnson 
(Lives of the Poets) and Thackeray (English Humorists) . Mr. 
Courthope's Life of Addison^ in the English Men of Letters 
series, should be read, if possible, if only to correct some of 
the mistakes or exaggerations of Macaulay's essay. Perhaps, 
too, in order to avoid carrying away from the prolonged 
study of one man a false estimate of his importance, it will 
be well to keep in mind the words written by a late critic, 
Mr. Gosse, in his History of Eighteenth Century Literature: 
*'With some modification, what has been said of Addison 
may be repeated of Steele, whose fame has been steadily 
growing while the exaggerated reputation of Addison has 
been declining." "The time has probably gone by when 
either Addison or Steele could be placed at the summit of 
the literary life of their time. Swift and Pope, each in his 
own way, distinctly surpassed them. 

47: 24. Abject idolatry. This is still another reference 
to what Macaulay elsewhere calls Boswellism, or disease of 
admiration. How near he comes to falling himself a victim 

m 



232 NOTES. 

to it in the present essay, the reader must not fail to 
judge. 
53 : 29. His knowledge of Greek. Note just what is said, 

and do not get the idea that Addison knew no Greek. 
Macaulay has a way of making his sentences seem to say 
more than is in their words. 

56: 10. Evidences of Christianity. The essay is entitled 
**Of the Christian Religion.'' Gibbon had long before 
brought the same charge of superficiality against the essay. 

56: 21. Moved tlie senate to admit. This is either one 
of Macaulay 's exaggerations or else "moved the senate" 
must be understood in a strictly parliamentary sense. 
What Addison wrote ("Of the Christian Religion," i. 7) is 
this: "Tertullian . . . tells . . . that the Emperor 
Tiberius, having received an account out of Palestine in 
Syria of the Divine Person who had appeared in that coun- 
try, paid him a particular regard, and threatened to punish 
any who should accuse the Christians; nay, that the em- 
peror would have adopted him among the deities whom they 
worshipped, had not the senate refused to come into his 
proposal." 

57: 12. Confounded an aphorism. This is very boldly 
borrowed, without acknowledgment, from the account of 
Blackmore in Johnson's Lives. Macaulay is not always fair 
to Johnson. As to the second charge against Blackmore, if 
Macaulay found four false quantities on one page (he seems 
to refer to the pronunciation of Latin proper names in an 
English poem, and not to Latin verses) he would probably 
consider that to be a sufficient basis for making the 
statement. 

58 : 28. Exsurgit. Again Macaulay seems to be quoting 
from memory, for Addison wrote assurgit^ following Vergil, 
Georgics 3, 355. The translation of the lines is : "Now into 
mid-ranks strides the lofty leader of the Pygmies, of awful 
majesty and venerable port, overtopping all the rest with 
his gigantic bulk, and towering to half an ell." 

62 : 18. After his tees. The figure was suggested by the 
subject-matter of a portion of the fourth Georgic — the hiving 
and care of bees. It is made more appropriate, too, by the 
familiar legend, told of many poets and particularly of Pin- 



NOTES. 233 

dar, that bees swarmed upon their lips in infancy, portend- 
ing the sweetness of their future songs. 

69: 12. The accomplished men. See Boswell's Johnson. 

69 : 23. Johnson will have it. In his life of Addison. It 
is interesting to see how Macaulay delights in setting his 
opinion against the great Doctor's. In his biographical 
essay upon him however, he is generous enough, though, as 
Mr. Morison says, his "appreciation is inadequate. " 

70: 16. No poem . . . in dead language. Macaulay 
in his various essays, repeats freely his ideas and illustra- 
tions. Turn to his essay on Frederic the Great, and in the 
passage beginning at about the eleventh paragraph, will be 
found this same discussion, together with the account of 
Frederic the Great's accomplishments in French, and an 
allusion to "Newdigate and Seatonian poetry." It is a 
good example of the working of the psychologic law of asso- 
ciation. And any one familiar with the essays can turn to 
a dozen such examples. 

71: 22. Ne croyez. "Do not think however, that I 
mean by this to condemn the Latin verses of one of your 
illustrious scholars which you have sent me. I find them 
excellent, worthy indeed of Vida or Sannazaro, though not 
of Horace and Vergil." 

72: 10. Quid numeris. "Why, O Muse, dost thou bid 
me, a Frank, born far this side of the Alps, again to stam- 
mer in Latin verse?" 

73: 7. An event. This union of France and Spain left 
the other countries of Europe at a great disadvantage, and 
led to the Grand Alliance against France and Spain, and 
the long War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) . 

74 : 29. More wonder than pleasure. Not, perhaps, until 
Ruskin's Stones of Venice (1851-53) was Gothic architecture 
fully appreciated by the English. 

75: 17. Soliloquy. For the famous soliloquy in Addi- 
son's Tragedy of Cato, see Act V., Sc. I. 

78:8. Tory fox hunter. Addison's Freeholder, No. 22. 

78: 15. Tomh of Misenus. Aeneid VI., 233. — Circe, Aen. 
VII., 10. 

82 : 7. He became tutor. Probably incorrect. See Glos- 
sary, Somerset. 



234 NOTES. 

84: 13. The position of Mr, Canning. That is, the posi- 
tion of a moderate Tory, favoring the measures and reforms 
advocated by the Whigs. 

87: 12. Famous similitude. Containing the famous line, 
"Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.'' 

89: 2. liife-guardsmano Members of the Life Guards 
must be six feet tall. Shaw must have been noted for excep- 
tional stature. 

93: 19. Spectre huntsman. Macaulay may be thinking 
of Byron's verse, "The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line." 
(Don Juan, iii., 106). "Ravenna's immemorial wood," says 
Byron, "Boccaccio's lore and Dryden's lay made haunted 
ground to me. " Addison should have known the story from 
Boccaccio's tale. Dryden's versification of it, Theodore and 
Honoriay was only published in 1700, while Addison was 
abroad, and it is not likely he had read it before visiting 
Ravenna, though he might well have read it before writing 
up his travels. However, Macaulay fails to consider that 
not all memories respond to suggestions so readily as his 
own. At one place in his journal, for instance, he tells how 
he visited Louis the Fourteenth's bedroom, and— "I thought 
of all St. Simon's anecdotes about that room and bed." 

93: 25. Greatest lyric poet. This is extravagant praise 

97: 4. The Censorship of the Press. This practically 
ceased in 1679, when the statute for the regulation of 
printing which was passed just after the Restoration, 
expired. 

98: 12. In Grub street. Does this mean that Walpole 
and Pulteney lived in Grub street? 

99: 27. Popularity . . . timidity. One of Macaulay 's 
paradoxes. 

lOl: 4. He had one hahit. "He [Macaulay] too fre- 
quently resorts to vulgar gaudiness. For example, there is 
in one place a certain description of an alleged practice of 
Addison's. Swift had said of Esther Johnson that 'whether 
from easiness in general, or from her indifference to persons, 
or from her despair of mending them, or from the same 
practice which she most liked in Mr. Addison, I cannot 
determine; but when she saw any of the company very 
warm in a wrong opinion, she was more inclined to confirm 



NOTES. 235 

them in it than to oppose them. It prevented noise, she 
said, and saved time, ' Let us behold what a picture Macau- 
lay draws on the strength of this passage. 'If his first 
attempts to set a presuming dunce right were ill-received,' 
Macaulay says of Addison, 'he changed his tone, "assented 
with civil leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and 
deeper into absurdity.' To compare this transformation of 
the simplicity of the original into the grotesque heat and 
overcharged violence of the copy, is to see the homely 
maiden of a country village transformed into the painted 
flaunter of the city."— John Morlby. Macaulay 's quota- 
tion "assented with civil leer," is from Pope's well-known 
line: 

"Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer." 

lOl : 12. Criticisms . . dialogue. Tatter, 163; Spectator^ 
568. 

104: 13. Steele. "The character of Steele, with his 
chivalry and his derelictions, his high ideal and his broken 
resolves, has been a favorite one with recent biographers, 
who prefer his rough address to the excessive and meticu- 
lous civility of Addison. It is permissible to love them 
both, and to see in each the complement of the other. It is 
proved that writers like Macaulay and even Thackeray have 
overcharged the picture of Steele's delinquencies, and have 
exaggerated the amount of Addison's patronage of his 
friend. But nothing can explain away Steele's carelessness 
in money matters or his inconsistency in questions of moral 
detail. He was very quick, warm-hearted and impulsive, 
while Addison had the advantage of a cold and phlegmatic 
constitution. Against the many eulogists of the younger 
man we may place Leigh Hunt's sentence : 'I prefer open- 
hearted Steele with all his faults to Addison with all his 
essays.' " — Gosse: History of Eighteenth Century Literature 
(1889). See also Aitken's Life of Steele^ II., 345 and else- 
where. 

105: 14. Provoked Addison. Lander's "Imaginary Con- 
versation between Steele and Addison" will be interesting 
reading in this connection. 

106: 10. The real history. See Introduction, 12. 



236 NOTES. 

1 1 1 : 23. By mere accident. As a matter of fact, critics 

are pretty well agreed that Steele led the way everywhere, 
though in certain respects Addison often outshone him. 
In the words of Mr. Aitken, Steele's biographer, *-the 
world owes Addison to Steele." 

112: 3. Half German jargon. Carlyle had for some 
years, like Coleridge before him, been acting as a medium 
between Crerman philosophy and literature and Koglish. 
Of course Macaulay is ridiculing Carlyle's uncouth style. 
Landor, another stickler for pure English, said upon the 
appearance of Carlyle's Fro'- '■':': that he ^^?s convinced he 
(Landor; wrote two dead la: ^ ...' ^z5— La:i:i and English. 

116: IS. R^.i'cngc . . :. Who Bet tes worth and 

De Pompignan vrere is not important. Can it be deter- 
mined from the text who •• wreaked revenge" upon them? 

120: 1. WTiitc sfa:^. Official badge of the Lord High 
Treasurer. 

120: 15. We calmly 'r&vi€u\ Calmly, perhaps, but not 
impartially. Macaulay's Whig prejudices are very appar- 
ent. 

121 : 25. Lost his fortune. It is very probable, however, 
that Addison was still what might be called "uidependently 
rich.*' 

127: 19. TTie foUowing papers. Xos. 26, 329, 69, 317, 159, 
a43. 517. 

128: 16. The starnp tax. A Tory measure of 1712 virtu- 
ally aimed at the freedom of the press. 

130: 4. Easy solution. Macaular's essays are full of 
these easy solutions. They are -usually mere guesses, but it 
must be admitted that they are usually sensible ones. 

131 : 11. From the city. That is, from the mercantile 
portion of the city — the original city of London, 

133: 30. The French model. This refers to dramas of 
the so-called Classical school, which adhered closely to 
certain conventional rules — the three ''unities.'' for in- 
stance, of time, place, and action- The Shaksperean drama 
is constructed with far greater freedom. 

135 : L But among. Why is this long paragraph allowed 
to stand as a unit, when it could easily be subdivided? And 
why are some short paragraphs (the ninth preceding, for 



NOTES. 237 

example) allowed to stand when they could easily be com- 
bined with the others? 

135:28. Malice. Toward whom? 

141 : 27. The Swift of 1708, 1708 was the date of one of 
Swift's best poems, Baucis and Philemon^ and of the attack 
upon astrology in the pamphlet against Partridge, the alma- 
nac-maker, which Macaulay has already mentioned. In 1738, 
the year of his last published writing (long after the death 
of Addison, be it noted) , he was an old man on the verge of 
insanity. 

142:27. Iliad. VI., 226. Diomedes speaks to Glaucus : 
*'So let us shun each other's spears, even among the throng; 
Trojans are there in multitudes and famous allies for me to 
slay, whoe'er it be that God vouchsafeth me, and my feet 
overtake ; and for thee are there Achaians in multitude, to 
slay whome'er thou canst."— Leaf's translation. 

152: 17. All stiletto and mask. For Macaulay 's portrait 
of Pope, as of Steele, many allowances must be made. 

153: 26. Cannot . . . certainty. See Courthope's 
Addison^ chapter vii. 

154: 16. Energetic lines. The "Epistle to Dr. Arbuth- 
not" (Prologue to the Satires) , lines 193-214. 

156: 22. Holland House. Macaulay has celebrated this 
mansion of social fame in one of his most ambitious periods 
— the concluding -paragraph of the essay on Lord Holland, a 
strange compound of artificiality of form and undeniable 
sincerity of feeling. 

157: 19. Consolatory verses. Not, of course, because he 
was to visit Ireland for the last time, but because he had to 
visit Ireland at all. 

164 : 11. Little Dicky was the nickname. In the article as 
originally printed in the Edinburgh Review this sentence 
stands: "Little Dicky was evidently the nickname of some 
comic actor who played the usurer Gomez," etc. Macaulay 
having discovered later that his guess was entirely right, 
inserted the name of the actor in the revised essay. But 
it may be noticed that, in the face of this positive informa- 
tion, his preceding argument and "confident affirmation," 
which he allowed to remain as writtten, now fall a little flat. 

16T: 10. Shepherd^ whose crook. It is a little hard to 



238 NOTES. 

forg-ive Macaulay for yielding so often to the temptation to 
paraphrase the most beautiful and most exalted passages in 
literature. The echoes from Comus in his essay on Milton 
will be remembered. And in his essay on Boswell's Life of 
Johnson he has ventured thus to lay hands on one of the 
sublimest utterances in Dante—Cacciaguida's prophecy of 
Dante's banishment. 

''Thou Shalt have proof how savoreth of salt 
The bread of others, and how hard a road 
The going down and up another's stairs." 

To have such pure poetry as this, which remains poetry 
still in Longfellow's perfect translation, turned into mere 
rhetoric, into ''that bread which is the bitterest of all food, 
those stairs which are the most toilsome of all paths," jars 
cruelly upon the sensibilities of all to whom the original has 
become familiar and sacred. 

168; 24. We ought to add. Here the journalist and re- 
viewer most inopportunely intrudes upon the eulogist. As 
to the eulogy itself, the catalogue of dignitaries in the pre- 
ceding sentence has no such impressiveness for the demo- 
cratic reader as it may have had for English readers of fifty 
years ago. In fact it is a little ridiculous, and throws a 
curious light either on Macaulay's estimate of his readers, 
or, what is equally probable, upon the limitations of his own 
nature. To see that nature at its best we must turn back 
to the revelation of a worthier feeling in the touching 
description of Addison's dedication of his works to his friend 
Craggs. 

THE LIFE OP SAMUEL JOHNSON 

Late in life, when he was busy with his History, and long 
after he had given up writing for the Edinburgh Review, 
Macaulay, purely out of friendship for the publisher of the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica, contributed to that work five 
biographical articles— on Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, 
Johnson, and Pitt. The present essay, written in 1856, and 
still included in the Encyclopaedia, is therefore probably the 
next to the last essay that he wrote. Twenty-five years 



NOTES. 239 

before, he had contributed to the Edinhurgh Review an article 
on Croker's edition of Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson. One- 
half of that article covered much the same ground as the 
later essay; the other half, naturally, was devoted to Bos- 
well and to a severe criticism of the manner in which Bos- 
well's book had been edited by John Wilson Croker, a 
political and personal enemy of Macaulay. The later essay, 
reprinted in our text, is much superior in every way — in 
brevity, unity, and tolerance of tone, failing perhaps only as 
Macaulay was temperamentally bound to fail, in discerning 
the moral depth of the great nature he tried to sound. The 
best collateral reading upon Johnson, apart from Boswell's 
monumental and indispensable work, is Carlyle's well- 
known essay, doubtless largely inspired by Macaulay's early 
and unsatisfactory treatment of the subject. 

Page 171: line 9. Royal touch. Johnson is said to have 
been the last person touched in England for this malady — 
the "King's Evil." The father's parental concern must 
have proved stronger than his politics, for Jacobites pro- 
fessed to believe that the divine power did not descend to 
William and Anne. For further particulars about this 
interesting superstition, see Macaulay's History of England, 
chap. xiv. Cp. also Macheth, iv. 3, 140 ff. 

172: 18. Restorers of learning. These were the scholars 
and writers of the Renaissance, the period of the revival of 
learning in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, just suc- 
ceeding the "dark ages." Among the best known are 
Petrarch and Boccaccio, both of whom wrote in Latin as 
well as Italian. 

180: 13. Dining on tripe. The description is scarcely 
exaggerated, but the humor is in questionable taste, and 
this, too, more from Macaulay's blunt way of putting 
things than from any offensiveness inherent in the subject. 

182: 13. Knocked down. "There is nothing to tell, dearest 
lady, but that he was insolent and I beat him, and that he 
was a blockhead and told of it, which I should never have 
done." — Piozzi's Anecdotes of Johnson. 

182: 25. It was not then safe. There was nothing like a 
general censorship of the English press after 1679, but it was 



240 NOTES. 

long understood that the right of free publication did not 
extend to political news. 

183: 30. The prejudices. Macaulay's strong Whig bias has 
evidently lent zest to the description that follows. If Car- 
lyle's description of Johnson be read, it is perhaps well to 
remember Carlyle's conservative tendencies. 

184: 4. Laudj etc. The events of the time of Charles I., 
here alluded to, may be found discussed in Macaulay's essay 
on Hampden. 

193 : 7. A change in the last sylldbU. That is to say, Irene 
differed from the other poem only in being unrhymed. 

193: 11. Benefit nights. Special performances, the pro- 
ceeds of which were given to the author. 

1 93 : 19. Tatler, Spectator. An account of these papers 
is given in the essay on Addison in this volume. See also, 
in this series, Mr. H. V. Abbott's Introduction to the Sir 
Roger de Coverley Papers, pages 36 and ff. 

195: 21. Sir Roger, etc. See Mr. Abbott's edition, as 
above. In Squire Bluster, Mrs. Busy, etc., the reference is, 
of course, to characters and sketches in The Rambler. 

196: 20. Monthly Review. There is no evidence that John- 
son either feared or respected the judgment of this Review, 
as Macaulay's words would half imply. It was a Radical 
organ, and he sometimes spoke of^it with contempt. The 
Critical Review, mentioned later, was a Tory paper. 

197 : 26. In a letter. Even Macaulay's high praise seems 
scarcely adequate to the language of this famous letter, in 
which scorn is tempered with dignity and justified by a 
deep-seated sense of wrong. It runs thus : 

To THE Right Honourable the Earl of Chesterfield. 

February 7, 1755. 

My Lord : — I have been lately informed, by the proprietor 
of The World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary is 
recommended to the public, were written by your Lordship. 
To be so distinguished, is an honour which, being very little 
accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how 
to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge. 

When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited 
your Lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, 
by the enchantment of your address, and could not forbear 
to wish that I might boast myself le vainqueur du vainqueur 



NOTES. 241 

de la terrc;— that I might obtain that regard for whieh I saw 
the world contending; but I found my attendance so little 
encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me 
to continue it. When I had once * addressed your Lordship 
in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a 
retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all 
that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all 
neglected, be it ever so little. 

Seven years, my Lord, have now past, since I waited in 
your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; 
during which time I have been pushing on my work through 
difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have 
brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one 
act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile 
of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had 
a Patron before. 

The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, 
and found him a native of the rocks. 

Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern 
on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has 
reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice 
which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it 
been early, had been kind ; but it has been delayed till I am 
indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and can- 
not impart it ; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope 
it is no very cynical asperity, not to confess obligations 
where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that 
the Public should consider me as owing that to a Patron 
which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. 

Having carried on my work thus far with so little obliga- 
tion to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed 
though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; 
for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in 
which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, 
My Lord, 
Your Lordship's most humble, 

Most obedient servant, 

Sam. Johnson. 

The passage in the Preface orthe Dictionary runs thus : 

"In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, 
let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed ; and 
though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the 
author, and the world is little solicitous to know whence 
proceeded the faults of that which it condemns ; yet it may 
gratify curiosity to inform it that the English Dictionary 
was written with little assistance of the learned, and with- 
out any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of 
retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but 
amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in 



242 NOTES. 

sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malig-nant criticism 
to observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, 
I have only failed in an attempt which no human powers 
have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, 
now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be 
yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delu- 
sive; if the aggregated knowledge, and co-operating dili- 
gence of the Italian academicians, did not secure them from 
|the censure of Beni ; if the embodied critics of France, when 
fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to 
change its economy, and give their second edition another 
form, I may surely be contented without the praise of per- 
fection, which, if I could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, 
what could it avail me? I have protracted my work till 
most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the 
grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I 
therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquility, having little to 
fear or hope from censure or from praise." 

198: 24. Scarcely a Teutonic language. A humorous state- 
ment of the common charge, often exaggerated, that John- 
son was fond of words of Latin origin. 

202 : 17. Hector J etc. See Troilus and Cressida, II. ii. ; 
Winter^ s Tale^ II. i. and V. ii. 

203: 5. The Lord Privy Seal. See Dictionaries under 
cabinet "You know, sir, Lord Gower forsook the old 
Jacobite interest. When I came to the word Renegado, after 
telling that it meant 'one who deserts to the enemy, a 
revolter,' I added. Sometimes we say a Gower. Thus it went 
to the press ; but the printer had more wit than I, and struck 
it out. ' ' — BoswelP s Johnson. 

203: 17. Oxford, etc. Recall the thirteenth paragraph of 
this essay. Cavendish and Bentinck, of course, were 
Whigs ; Somerset and Wyndham Tories. It may be quite 
accidental, but it is interesting to note that Macaulay 
describes the loyalty of the latter men in half contemptuous 
language. Rhetorically considered, the passage is a good 
example of Macaulay's swift narrative, with explanatory 
connectives omitted. See Introduction, 15. 

205: 6. A ghost. See the account of this in Bos well's 
Johnson^ 1763 ; also, Harper^s Magazine, August, 1893. Macau- 
lay's account should not be allowed to pass without com- 
parison with Carlyle's in the latter's essay on BoswelPs Life 
of Johnson, 



NOTES. 243 

209 : 19. Trunk-maker, etc. Books and papers otherwise 
unsalable were turned over to trunk-makers and cooks, 
who employed the paper in lining" trunks and pans. 

211: 17. Prejudiced against BoswelVs country. Compare the 
famous definition in his Dictionary: "Oats. — A grain which 
in England is g-enerally given to horses, but in Scotland 
supports the people." 

219: 14. Maxime, etc. "I very much desire, if you are 
willing, to try a bout with you." 

219: 29. Written down. This is an ellipsis of the famous 
exclamation of Dogberry, "O that he were here to write me 
down an ass !" — Much Ado About Nothing, II. ii. 

231: 18. As Burke would have failed. See Introduction, 8. 

226: 1. Music-master from Brescia. The name of this 
Italian was Piozzi. Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes of Johnson make 
an interesting supplement to Boswell's Life. 

226 : 19. A solemn . . . prayer. 

"Almighty God, Father of all mercy, help me by Thy 
grace, that I may, with humble and sincere thankfulness, 
remember the comforts and conveniences which I have 
enjoyed at this place; and that I may resign them with 
holy submission, equally trusting in Thy protection when 
Thou givest, and when Thou takest away. Have mercy 
upon me, O Lord, have mercy upon me. 

"To Thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I commend this 
family. Bless, guide, and defend them, that they may so 
pass through this world, as finally to enjoy in Thy presence 
everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen." 

Boswell has recorded some half a dozen of Johnson's 
prayers. 

226: 25. Few and evil. Cp. Genesis, xlvii.9. 

227 : 9. Two pictures. See Hamlet, III. iv. 53. 



GLOSSAEY. 



For the principle followed in compiling this Glosiary, and on the us« »f 
reference books generally, see Preface. 



Act. At Oxford, the occasion of the 
conferring of degrees, at which 
formerly miracle and mystery 
plays were enacted. After 1669 
the Act was performed in the 
Sheldonian Theatre, and London 
companies frequently went down 
to give performances . 133 : 15. 

Act of Settlement. The agree- 
ment by which the Hanoverians 
and not the Stuarts (whom Louis 
XIV. favored) were to succeed 
Queen Anne. 85:6. 

Aes'chylus, Eurip'ides, Soph'- 
ocles. The three great tragic 
poets of Greece. 207;7. 

Ag'barus or Ab'garns. Kuler of 
Edessa in Mesopotamia. Euse- 
bios supposed him to have been 
the author of a letter written to 
Christ, found in the church at 
Edessa. The letter is believed by 
Gibbon and others to be spurious. 
56:22. 

Alamode beefshops. "Alamode 
beef" is a stew made of beef 
scraps. 181:24. 

Almon and Stockdale. Eighteenth 
century London publishers and 
booksellers. The former was also 
a political pamphleteer and friend 
of Wilkes. 220:17. 

Athalie ' . A tragedy by the French 
dramatist Racine. 134:1. 

Augastan. The Roman literature 
of the age of Augustus was 
marked by polish and refinement* 



The age of Queen Anne in English 
literature is often called the Au- 
gustan age. 172:12. 

Balisar'da. In Ariosto's Orlando 
Furioso, the enchanted sword of 
Orlando (cp. Arthur's Excalibur), 
which finally falls into the hands 
of Rogero. In Rogero's fight with 
Bradamante, it is exchanged for 
another sword (xlv. 68). 45:18. 

Beggar's Opera, The. By John 
Gay. It was produced in London 
in 1728 and ran for sixty-three 
nights, practically driving from 
the stage Italian opera, which it 
satirized. 180:11. 

Ben. That is, "rare Ben" Jonson, 
the second great dramatist of the 
Elizabethan age. 206:28. 

Bena'cus. The largest lake of 
Northern Italy and noted for 
storms. It is now called Garda. 
Vergil (Qecnrgics 2, 160) tells of 
"Benacus, swelling with billows 
and boisterous turmoil, like a 
sea." 74:30. 

Bentley, Richard. A noted English 
classical scholar. His "Disserta- 
tion on the Epistles of Phalaris" 
(1697, 1699), which Person, another 
noted scholar, called "the immor- 
tal dissertation," was written to 
prove the spuriousness of those 
epistles. 57:22. 

Bill of Rights, or Declaration of 
Rights. See any English History. 



344 



GLOSSARY. 



245 



BlographiaBritannica. Published 
1747-66. Long a standard work; 
superseded of course now, espe- 
cially by the Dictionary of National 
Biography. 49:7. 

Blenheim. In Bavaria. The scene 
of the great defeat of the French 
(1704) by the allies under Marl- 
borough^and Prince Eugene. 84: 
29. 

Blues, Greens. In Koman chariot 
races the drivers were divided into 
four companies, distinguished by 
four colors— green, red, blue, and 
white— corresponding to the four 
seasons of the year. Macaulay 
has in mind the later factions at 
Constantinople, for which see 
Gibbon. 183:15. 

Book of Gold. The name given to 
the list of Genoese nobles and citi- 
zens of property which was made 
at the time Andrea Doria deliv- 
ered Genoa from French domina- 
tion (1528). 74:22. 

Boyle, Charles. He attempted, 
with the help of others, to defend 
the genuineness of the"Epistles 
of Phalaris" against the famous 
scholar Bentley. Swift's Battle of 
the Books is founded on the inci- 
dent. See Macaulay' s sketch of 
Atterbury in the Ency. Brit. 57:5. 

Bradaman'te. In Ariosto's Orlando 
Furioso a woman of great prow- 
ess, finally overcome by Rogero, 
whom she marries. 45:16. 

Brunei, Sir Marc Isambard. A 
civil engineer who in 1806 com- 
pleted machinery for making 
ships' blocks. 60:26. 

Buck, Macaroni. Equivalent to 
the later blood, fop, dandy. The 
second word is derived from The 
Macaroni Club, a set of young 
men who had traveled in Italy 
and introduced into England the 
Italian dish, macaroni. 214 :14. 



Barney, Frances. A novelist, au- 
thor of Evelina^ etc. See Macau- 
lay's essay upon her, entitled 
Madame D'Arblay. 228 :22. 

Button's. A London coflfee-house, 
probably established by an old 
servant of Addison's. 48 :15. 



Captain General. See Mablbob- 
OUGH. 95:21. 

Capulets, Montagues. Two hos- 
tile families of northern Italy 
celebrated through Shakspere's 
Borneo and Juliet. 183 :15. 

Catharine of Braganza. The In- 
fanta of Portugal. Married Charles 
II. of England in 1662. 49: 23. 

Cat'inat, Nicholas. Commander 
of the French army in Northern 
Italy in the War of the Spanish 
Succession. 79:30. 

Charter House (a corruption of 
Chartreuse), Originally a Carthu- 
sian monastery in London; later 
an endowed hospital and school 
for boys. Pictured by Thackeray, 
in The Newcomes, under the name 
of Grey Friars. 50:20. 

Cliild's. A coflfee-house, frequented 
by churchmen. 124:17. 

Churchill, Charles. An English 
poet and satirist of the eighteenth 
century. 205:15. 

Cibber, CoUey. This inferior plaj'- 
wright, actor, and adapter of 
Shakspere's plays, was appointed 
poet laureate in 1730. He was 
satirized by Pope in the Bunciady 
which Savage assisted Pope in 
publishing. 222:15. 

Cinna. A tragedy by the French 
dramatist Corneille. 134:2. 

Clerkenwell. A district of nor- 
thern London which formerly 
bore an evil reputation. 205:9. 

Cock Lane Ghost. See Boswell's 
Johnson^ June 25, 1763. 56;18. 



246 



GLOSSARY. 



Collier, Jeremy, An English cler- 
gyman. He attacked the contem- 
porary theatre in his Immorality 
and JProfaneness of the English 
Stage, 169S. 117:3. 

Conduct of the Allies. A famous 
Tory pamphlet written by Swift, 
1711. 97:13. 

Congreve, 46:29; Wycherley, 
117:5; Etherege, 117:4; Van- 
brugh, 117:15. For the Restora- 
tion drama and dramatists, see 
Macaulay'a essay on Leigh Sunt's 
edition of the dramatists; also 
his History, Chapters II and III. 

Corporation. In English politics, 
a body of men governing a town 
and selecting its member of Par- 
liament. 122:4. 

demy', or demi. At Magdalen 
College, Oxford, a student upon a 
scholarship, who will succeed to 
the next vacant fellowship. 52: 
19. 

Dodlngton, George Bubb. An Eng- 
lish politician with the reputation 
of a place-hunter. He patronized 
Young and other men of letters. 
194:10. 

Drury Ijane Theatre. This famous 
London theatre, opened in 1663, 
was reopened in 1674 with an ad- 
dress by Dryden. 191 :30. 

Duenna, The. One of Sheridan's 
comedies. 164:5. 

Ellz'abethan age. In literature, 
the term commonly includes the 
reigns of both Elizabeth and 
James I. 47:4. 

Ephesian 3Iatron. The legend 
runs, according to Petronius, that 
a woman of Ephesus, while 
mourning over the body of her 
husband in the burial-vault, was 
smitten with love for a soldier 
who was standing guard, and 



straightway married him. See 
Jeremy Taylor's Ifoly Dying, V. 
viii. 227:9. 

Erasmus. A famous Dutch the- 
ological scholar. His works, after 
the fashion of the time (1500), 
were written in Latin. 71:10. 

Etherege. See Congreve. 117:4. 

Eton. Eton College, twenty -one 
miles southwest of London, is one 
of England's great public schools. 
The classes in these schools are 
known as "forms," and the sixth 
form is usually the highest. 172:16. 

Eugene, Prince. The Austrian 
general in the War of the Spanish 
Succession. 125 : 22. 

Faustina. The profligate wife of 
the Roman emperor, Marcus 
AureUus. 92:19. 

Fracasto'rius, The Latin form of 
Fracastorio. An Italian physician 
of the 16th century, who wrote 
Latin poems on pathological sub- 
jects. 71:10. 

Frances'ca da Rimini. Made im- 
mortal in the most famous Canto 
(Inf. V.) of Dante's Divine Comedy 
93:21. 

Frederic, Louis. Eldest son of 
George II. He died at Leicester 
House, then the residence of the 
Prince of Wales, in 1751. 194:15. 

Freeholder. A pol Itical paper pub- 
lished by Addison, December, 1715, 
to June, 1716. 78:8. 

Garrets. Like attics^ sometimes 
used in the plural for the rooms in 
the attic story. 214:22. 

Gazetteer. The editor of the state 
newspaper, the Gazette, estab- 
lished by Charles II. 109 :15. 

Ger'ano-Pygmaeoma'chla, or Pyg- 
mseo-Geranomachia. (Battle of tjie 
Bygmies and Cranes). A Latin 
poem by Addison, 72 : 15. 



GLOSSARY. 



347 



Godolphiu^ Earl of. Lord High 
Treasurer during the early part of 
Anne's reign. As a financier, he 
raised the funds to support Marl- 
borough in his prosecution of the 
war on the continent. 83: 8. 

Goodman's Fields. In the neigh- 
borhood of the Tower of London. 
191:27. 

Grand Alliance. The alliance 
formed in 1701 between the Holy 
Eoman Empire England, and the 
Netherlands against France and 
Spain. 80: 5. 

Grecian, The. A London coffee- 
house of the eighteenth century. 
The Learned Club met there, 
109:27. 

Grub Street, Loudon. Now Milton 
street; formerly noted as the 
abode of small authors. 188:28. 

Guardian. A periodical published 
by Steele and Addison, 1713. 73: 3. 

Gunning, Maria and Elizabeth, 
Two sisters who went to Loudon 
in 1751 and became celebrated for 
their beauty. When Maria walked 
in Hyde Park she attracted such 
crowds that the king had to fur- 
nish her with a body-guard. 196: 
16. 

Gwynn, Nell. An English actress, 
and mistress of Charles II. 156: 
24. 

Halifax. See Montague. 80:20- 

Hampton Court. A royal palace 
on the Thames. 47 : 3. 

Harleian Library. A famous col- 
lection of books and manuscripts, 
now in the British Museum. When 
it was in Osborne's possession, 
Johnson prepared an elaborate 
description of it. 182:14. 

Harley, Edward. An English Tory 
statesman and High Churchman. 
Before 1690 he had been a Whig. 
95:16. 



Hartley, David. An English phil- 
osopher and psychologist, a friend 
of Young. 194: 9. 

Holland House. See Note on. 
156:22. 

Hough, John. Bishop of Worces- 
ter. Elected president of Magda- 
len College, 1687. 52:6. 

Inns of Court. The name of four 
legal societies of London, and of 
the premises which they occupy— 
the Inner Temple, the Middle 
Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's 
Inn. 131:8. 

Ireland, William Henry. A writer 
of plays which he pretended to 
have discovered, and attributed to 
Shakspere. Vortigem and B(yW' 
ena was played at Drury Lane, 
1796, and its complete failure re- 
sulted in exposure. 56: 19. 

Jack Pudding. A clown in English 
folk-lore. 114:13. 

Jenyns, Soame. An English mis- 
cellaneous writer of the eighteenth 
century, whose style was better 
than his matter. 199:21. 

Johnson's Club. Otherwise known 
as The Literary Club. It is still 
in existence. 210:18. 

Jonathan's and Garra way's. Lon- 
don coffee-houses frequented by 
merchants and stock-jobbers. 
The promoters of the South Sea 
Bubble met at Qarraway's. 131: 
12. 

Junius, Franziskus. A German 
student of the Teutonic languages 
and compiler of an etymological 
dictionary. He died in England in 
1677. 198:26. 

Juvenal. A Roman satirist. John- 
son's London is modelled after his 
Third Satire. 185:21. 

Kit-Cat Club. A club of Whig 
politicians and wits. 67 : 5. 



248 



GLOSSARY. 



Lady Mary. See Montagu. 

Liaiiguisli, Lydia. A romantic char- 
acter in Sheridan's comedy, The 
Rivals. 200:16. 

Liapu'taii flapper. See Oulliver^s 
TravelSyi\\.2. 46:16. 

Ijennox and Sheridan, Mesdames. 
Literary women and friends of Dr. 
Johnson. The latter was the 
mother of the dramatist, Sher- 
idan. 202:2. 

liilliput. See Gulliver''s Travels for 
the meaning of the terms in this 
passage. 182:30. 

Machi'n89 Gesticulan'tes. {Puppet 
Show). A Latin poem by Addison. 
72:14. 

Macpherson, James. A Scotch 
poet. His Fingal, an Epic Poem in 
Six Books, professing to be a trans- 
lation of certain Gaelic poems in 
which Fingal is the hero and Os- 
sian the bard, is now generally 
regarded as in the main a forgery. 
218:8 

Macrobius. A Roman grammarian 
of the fifth century. 173: 15. 

Malone, Edmund. A noted Shak- 
sperean critic; died 1812. He ed- 
ited various editions of Bos well's 
Johnson. 224:8. 

Manchester, Earl of. Ambassador 
to France just before the War of 
the Spanish Succession. 66:29. 

Mansfield, Lord. William Murray, 
chief-justice of the king's bench, 
1756-1788. 217:22. 

Marlborough, Duke of (John 
Churchill). One of the most fa- 
mous of England's great com- 
manders. He was the leading 
spirit of the Grand Alliance. 
83:8. 

Marli. Marly-le-Roy, a village 
ten miles from Paris, noted for a 
chateau of Louis XIV. 1x9 ;20. 



Meister, Wilhelm. The hero of Goe- 
the's novel, Wilhelm Meistet-'s Ap- 
prenticeship. 206:5. 

Mitre, The. A noted London tav- 
ern, near Fleet street, a favorite 
resort of Dr. Johnson. 215:23. 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. A 
keen observer and witty writer, 
who moved in the higher literary 
and court circles under the first 
Georges. Her Letters were pub- 
lished in 1763. 196:17. 

Mourad Bey. Commander of the 
Mamelukes at their defeat by 
Napoleon in the Battle of the 
Pyramids. 89:7. 

New'digate prize. An annual prize 
for English verse, founded at Ox- 
ford by Sir Roger Newdigate. 
59:24. 

Newgate. A famous old London 
prison. 187:22. 

Newmarket Heath, in Cambridge- 
shire. Annual horse-races have 
been held there since the time of 
James I. 85:14. 

October Club. A club of extreme 
Tories, named for its celebrated 
October ale. 131:27. 

Orrery. John Boyle, fifth Earl of 
Orrery, who pubhshed Remarks on 
the Life of Swift. 222: 16. 

Pembroke, One of the latest 
founded of the nineteen colleges 
which in Johnson's time com- 
prised the University of Oxford. 
Christ Church was another, older 
and more aristocratic. Both still 
exist. 173:7. 

peripetia. A Greek technical 
term, signifying a sudden change 
or reverse of fortune, on which 
the plot of a tragedy turns; the 
denouement. 136:20. 

Folitian. A Florentine poet and 
scholar of the Renaissance period 
177:19. 



GLOSSARY. 



249 



Pomposo (Italian). 
205:19. 



"Pompous. 



Prior, Matthew. An English poet. 
After the death of Anne and the 
rise of the Whig ministry, he was 
imprisoned under suspicion of 
high treason (1715-17). 46:30. 

Psalmanazar, George. A French 
impostor who pretended to be a 
native of Japan converted to 
Christianity. He invented for 
himself a "native" language, call- 
ing it "Formosan."" 187:11. 

Queensberrys and IJepels. Fam- 
ilies of the aristocracy . 1 7 7 : 30. 

Ravenna, Wood of. The Bineta or 
pine forest on the shore near Ra- 
venna. See Dante, I^urg. xxviii, 
20. 93:18. 

Rich, Henry. Earl of Holland, 
from whom Holland House took 
its name. 160:18. 

Richardson, Samuel. Author of 
the famous eighteenth century 
novels, Pamelay Clarissa JSarlowe, 
and Sir Charles Grandison. 199: 6. 

Roma'no, Giulio. An Italian 
painter, and pupil of Raphael. 
101:18. 

Royal Academy, The. An academy 
of fine arts, particularly painting, 
founded 1768. Johnson was ap- 
pointed ''Professor of Ancient Lit- 
erature." 107:23. 

Sachev'erell, Henry. An English 
High Church clergyman and vio- 
lent Tory. He was impeached for 
preaching against the Whig min- 
istry. The trial grew into a party 
struggle, which resulted In the 
overthrov/ of the Whigs in 1710. 
95:27. 

Saint James's Square. A center 
of the London aristocracy. A blue 
ribbon is the badge of the Order of 
the Garter, the highest order of 



knighthood in Great Britain. 187: 
20. 

St. James's Coffee-House. The 
resort of poUticians. 124:18. 

Santa Cro'ce, Church of. In Flor- 
ence. Michelangelo, Galileo, and 
others are buried there. 93:18. 

Satirist . . ^ Age. Sensational 
journals of Macaulay's time. 
152:8. 

Saul. A tragedy by the Italian poet 
Alfieri.:^ 134:1. 

Savoy, Duke of. See Victob Ama- 
DEus. 80:1. 

Seatonian prize. An annual prize 
for sacred poetry, founded at Cam- 
bridge by the will (1741) of Thos. 
Seaton, hymn writer. 59:24. 

Seja'nus. A Roman courtier, and 
favorite of Tiberius. 191:5. 

Silius Ital'icus. A Roman writer 
of a dull heroic poem in seventeen 
books. 55:12. 

Skinner, Stephen An English lex- 
icographer whose Etymological 
Dictionary was published in 1671. 
198:26. 

Smalridge, George, Bishop of Bris- 
tol in the time of Queen Anne. 
Dr. Johnson praised his sermons 
for their "style." 118:9. 

Somerset. Charles Seymour, sixth 
Duke of Somerset. Called "the 
Proud " — hardly distinguished 
otherwise. He refused to employ 
Addison as tutor to his son, possi- 
bly because future patronage 
would be expected of chim. 65:11. 

South wark (suth'ark). A London 
borough, south of the Thames. 
213:21. 

Spectator. A paper published dai ly 
by Steele, Addison and others, 
Mar., 1711, to Dec, 1712; continued 
by Addison in 1714. 73: 3. 

Spence, Joseph (1699-1768). An 
English critic who left a volume 
of criticism i^nd anecdotes. 68:2. 



250 



GLOSSARY. 



Sponging-liouse. A house to which 
debtors were temporarily taken 
before being thrown into prison 
for debt. 199:5. 

Squire TVestern. A character in 
Fielding's Tom Jones. 145:4. 

Streatham Common. A district 
of London, near the present Brit- 
ish Museum. 113:22. 

Surface, Joseph. A hypocrite in 
Sheridan's School for Scandal. 
155:15. 

Tangier', or Tangiers. A seaport 
of Morocco. 49:22. 

Tatler. A periodical published by 
Steele and Addison, 1709-11. 101: 
12. 

Teazle, Sir Peter. A character in 
Sheridan's School for Scandal. 155: 
15. 

Tempest, Tom. See Johnson's JdZcr, 
No. 10. 184:2. 

Temple, Sir William. An English 
statesman and author. Macaulay 
has an essay upon him. 111:27. 

Theobald's. A country seat in 
Hertfordshire. The residence of 
Lord Burleigh. Used as a palace 
by James I. 47:1. 

Thundering Legion. A legion of 
Christian soldiers under Marcus 
Aurelius. whose prayers for rain, 
according to legend, were answered 
by a thunder storm which de- 
stroyed their enemies. Addison 
speaks of the event in his essay 
"Of the Christian Keligion," vii. 3. 
56:20. 

Tooke, Home. The name assumed 
by John Home in 1782. He was a 
philologist and a politician— an 
extreme Liberal, often in contro- 
versy. 198:4. 

Town Talk. A paper established 
by Steele, Dec. 17, 1715. But nine 
numbers were issued. 146: 3. 

Triad. A rhetorical term signify- 



ing a group of three balanced 
words or phrases. (The next fol- 
lowing sentence in Macaulay's 
essay affords an example) . 108: 16. 

Yanbrugh'. See Coi^greve. 117: 
15. 

Victor Amadous II. , Duke of Sa- 
voy. He abandoned Louis and 
joined the alliance in 1703. 92 :11. 

Walpole, Horace (1717-97). The au- 
thor of The Castle of Otranto and 
many memoirs and letters. 112 :1. 

Warburton, William. Bishop of 
Gloucester. A critic of Johnson's 
time, and editor of Shakspere's 
plays. 189:14. 

Whitfield, George (commonly 
spelled Whitefield). A celebrated 
open-air preacher, one of the 
founders of Methodism. 211:12. 

Wild of Sussex. Commonly called 
"Weald." The Weald is a name 
given to a district comprising 
portions of the counties of Kent 
and Sussex in southeastern Eng- 
land. It is not certain whether 
the word is to be traced to the 
Anglo-Saxon iveald, "forest," mod- 
ern "wold," or whether it is an 
irregular form of wild. 49:18. 

Wilkes, John. An English dem- 
agogue. See Macaulay's essay on 
The Earl of Chatham. 211:10. 

Will's. A well-known London cof- 
fee-house in the time of Dry den 
and Addison, known also as "The 
Wits' Coffee-House." The resort 
of poets and wits. 109:27. 

Windham, William. Secretary for 
War under Pitt. He was a pall- 
bearer at Johnson's funeraL 228: 
19. 

Wych'erley. See Congrkve. 117 : 5. 

Young, Edward. Author of the 
meditative blank verse poem, 
Night Thoughts. 194:8. 



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